Suzan-Lori Parks - Getting Mother’s Body

“Willa Mae was always singing her songs and flaunting herself. Billy can’t even carry a tune,” Teddy says.

“What you got against yr own sister?” I ask him. “What you got against Billy taking after her own mother?”

“Willa Mae ended up in the ground,” Teddy says.

“We all end up in the ground,” I says.

The tune Billy’s whistling don’t sound like a song. Just a bunch of notes and not in a steady rhythm. Then I recognize it. She’s whistling around something Willa used to sing. I can’t recall the words though.

“You got more luck than anybody in Texas,” Teddy says.

“I’ve had my share of bad luck too,” I says and Teddy nods cause he knows.

“Where did I come here from?” I ask him.

“Dade County, Florida,” Teddy says.

“Dade County, Florida, and don’t you forget it,” I says.

I came here from Florida with the promise of work from Mr. Sanderson, and when I found out the work was just field work alongside the wetbacks and the no-counts, I didn’t go back. I stuck it out. I worked harder than all the women and most of the men and saved up enough to start my pig business. Teddy remembers that. And when Willa Mae Beede came home to Lincoln looking to move in with Teddy, her married brother, she ended up living with me instead. Me and her was like husband and wife, almost. When Billy was born, it was me, Dill Smiles, who took care of Willa Mae and her bastard child both. And when Willa Mae left me for good that last time, it was my mother’s house in LaJunta where she decided to die at. I drove out there. Billy was standing in the corner of the room like a little dark ghost. Willa Mae was dying in a bed of blood. She’d tried to get rid of her second baby and botched it. She told me she was sorry for the wrong she’d done me and that she wanted to be put in the ground with her pearl necklace and her diamond ring. I gave her my word. Then she died. I was with her. Teddy knows.

Teddy and me can see Billy good now. She’s carrying a box balanced on her head and holding it with one hand, like they carry stuff over in Africa.

When Teddy Beede looks at me, he sees what I want him to see: Dill Smiles and Dill Smiles’ luck, which, to Teddy’s mind, springs from the bounty of Dill Smiles’ fairness, which in turn, springs out of a long swamp of unlucky years that hardworking Dill Smiles has bravely lived longer than. To Teddy, because I’ve lived longer than my bad luck did, I’m now allowed to enjoy thirteen healthy piglets and a shiny new-looking truck. But it ain’t that way at all.

I paid an undertaker to wash her body and put her in the coffin that I’d paid for out my own pocket. Before he nailed down the lid, I had a last look and took the necklace and the ring. Then me and the undertaker carried her outside and I saved a few dollars by digging the grave and burying her myself. I put her in the ground, put her jewelry in my pocket and brought Billy back here for Teddy and June to raise. When they asked after the jewels I told them the jewels was underground. In truth, I got Willa’s diamond ring in my own pocket. The necklace of pearls she asked me to bury her with, I’ve been selling pearl by pearl to a fella in Dallas who don’t ask no questions. The pearls are all sold but I still got the ring. My hole card. If the pigs fail again I’ll have to sell it.

The luck of Dill Smiles ain’t no luck at all, but compared to Teddy and June and Billy, it’s like I step in shit every day.

July 16, 1963

The Pink Flamingo Motel

LaJunta, Arizona

Dear June and Roosevelt and Billy,

The past month has been what you could call very interesting. Even and me are on what Even calls “the up and up,” and so I am going to surprise you this time by not asking for payment to keep up Willa Mae’s grave.

If you have the time to read this letter you will soon discover what our new circumstances are all about. I hope you are not too busy. From your last letter it seemed like Texas was trying to beat Arizona as the hottest state. I hope your filling station has not run dry (ha ha) but I also hope that it has not run you ragged neither. I hope you have the time to read this because I have taken the time to write to you and it would be a shame to skip this good times letter after all the hard times letters I have sent your way.

Like so many things that come into your life, our present good luck came when we were just going about our daily business. We had not had any visitors in several days except an official from the bank in Tucson who came to inquire if we were interested in selling our land and motel. He left pretty fast when we told him no. But the banker from Tucson is hardly what I would call a visitor. The motel has been in a run-down condition for several years which is why I kept writing you all for payment. The payment would of helped. There were plenty of times that I thought I should write to my own flesh and blood, Dill Smiles, but you know as well as I do that Dill and her money are on a till death do us part basis.

On the day that turned out to be our lucky one, I was in the back working with Even who is becoming quite a horsewoman in her own right and if you ever manage to get out this way she and I will put on a show for you if Buster, that’s Even’s horse, is willing. We were out back working on her routines and up walks another white man in a dark suit. I thought he was another banker but, no, he was from The Rising Bird Development Corporation. They’ve got headquarters in Phoenix. They were hoping to build one of those big new shopping centers in the rear of our motel. It would give folks in that new housing development somewhere closer to shop. They wondered if I wanted to sell the land. There were several benefits to this. One was that our Pink Flamingo Motel would be in walking distance to a supermarket and that would be good for business. That is what came into my mind at first, the nearness of the supermarket, and then of course I thought of the money of the sale. I will not trouble you with the details of the sale but only say that we agreed to sell right away and the deal has gone through with very little trouble and I have received a fair amount of money for the sale of the five acres that was, before I sold it, the rear of our property. We still have enough yard for Buster and of course the Motel and swimming pool are untouched.

There is a matter that you might want to know about. The Rising Bird Corporation has plans to plow up and pave over what used to be my land. That is to say that they will be disturbing the place where Willa Mae is buried. It doesn’t sit right with me and Even that this should happen. The little I know of Willa Mae, she was a nice person. We dare not rescue the body ourselves because of the threats against my person made by Dill Smiles. I have never wanted to mention this, but Dill Smiles told me at the time of Willa Mae’s burial that if I so much as thought about disturbing Willa Mae and “stealing,” as Dill put it, the jewels, that Dill would drive all the way out here and be very pleased to gun me down, her own mother.

I suggest that if you want to save Willa’s remains from the fate I have mentioned above, please come out here and move her body. Even has made a lovely grave site here in the backyard, but it’s time for Willa Mae to move on. Perhaps she would want to be reburied in Lincoln. If not, we have a nice cemetery in LaJunta that has welcomed John Henry Napoleon and would welcome Willa Mae Beede too.

I hope, June, that you and Roosevelt and Billy (and I am saying it like this because I know from your letters back that you, June, are reading this to the others), and so I hope, June, that you and Roosevelt and Billy do not think I have gone back on my promise by selling my land and thereby putting you all in this inconvenient situation. I hope instead that you all will be happy that I am no longer writing you asking you for upkeep money. I would send some of our recently acquired money your way but Even is still living at home and Buster, as you can imagine, is a very large mouth to keep fed.