Amy Bloom - Love Invents Us

Three church Stewardesses went right to Mrs. Hill’s house. They went about their business, tidying up, remarking, wrestling the smell of death out the door, humming melody and harmony for their favorite hymns. No one knew what Mrs. Hill’s favorites were. When Mr. Hill died, all her sociability went with him. No Missionary Society, no Board, not even the Four Seasons Tea or the community potluck could get her back to church. The Stewardesses were not cleaning for Mrs. Hill, they were certainly not cleaning for hincty Vivian Hill, graduated first in her class from North Shore High School, went to medical school in California, left an ailing mother, hardly visited, couldn’t be bothered with the church when she did. They were cleaning for the Stewardesses, for their sense of what was right, for their own peace of mind. No one would say they had not done right by Sister Hill, least of all Miss Vivian in that white Mercedes.

Elizabeth went to the funeral as properly dressed as she could stand, expecting warmth and light and a huge, swaying choir of sweet black voices, Mrs. Hill’s community, her people, throwing their arms around Mrs. Hill to take her in and carry her home, laying her head on a soft dark breast.

The funeral parlor was not large. Dusty olive-green velvet drapes hung down behind two tottering plant stands crowned by massive pink and yellow gladioli. The front rows were empty except for a single woman wearing sunglasses, a chic black silk suit, and black patent leather heels. She was the only woman without a hat, with close-cropped natural hair, and when a large church lady in a grey dress and matching jacket and an ivory grey-feathered turban sat down next to her and put one gloved hand on her dark, ringless hand, Elizabeth could see that Dr. Hill was an outsider too. There were no other white people, and Elizabeth headed toward the back, away from the casket, away from the light bouncing off Reverend Shales as he began to rumble informally beneath the organ wheezing through “God Will Take Care of You.”

Someone put a pamphlet in Elizabeth’s hand, and she looked hard at the tiny xeroxed picture of a middle-aged Mrs. Hill frowning back, even then cocking her head a little. The lady in the grey dress got up, smoothed her white gloves, and stood foursquare in the room. She sang “Just a Closer Walk with Thee,” and Elizabeth closed her eyes and tried to feel and smell Huddie in this warm, scented room of brown flesh that was all not him. The voice was sweet and full of feeling, but it was not feeling for Mrs. Hill. It was the singer’s love for her Lord, her powerful, in-the-very-core-of-her-being belief in her personal relationship with her Savior, and it was her devotion to Reverend Samuel C. Shales. Mrs. Hill was only an opportunity to celebrate, and the celebration of this whole world that was not Elizabeth’s and not open to her, the slap-obvious truth that this place was not her home, any more than her mother’s house was, that her only home had been Mrs. Hill’s footstool and Huddie’s narrow bed, made Elizabeth crumple up and cry until one of the ladies beside her, kind and curious, passed her a lace hankie that Elizabeth tried to use without actually soiling it or blowing her nose on it.

Reverend Shales said all life was precious, said something soft-voiced and tender about those who lived in the shelter of the Lords something, and then he swung into it.

“Death reminds us that life is given by God, by God Almighty alone, and life is taken away by God. Live righteously and prepare for Judgment Day. As it has come to Sister Hill, it will come to each and every one of us. Live righteously and be judged righteous, for those that are judged righteous shall sit with the Lord in his heavenly mansions, I say they shall sit at the right hand of God in his glorious, heavenly home, and they, the righteous among us, shall feast at the heavenly banquet.”

The women around her began to shift and nod, and Elizabeth could see Mrs. Hill nodding to herself, rooting around in the pork rind bag until she found the really crispy, curlicued ones.

Reverend Shales rose on his tiptoes, thundering now, and the chairs rocked on a tide of Amen and Yes, Lord. Elizabeth saw the straight, lean back of Dr. Hill and hoped that it was rigid with outraged love and the knowledge that Mrs. Hill was not in this place, not even held temporarily in that mauve pearlized casket.

“For those who don’t live right, fornicators, adulterers, liars, thieves, gossips, the impure , the immoral, the amoral, those who refuse to give their hearts to the Lord and those, even worse, who gave their hearts to the Lord and turned their backs on Him — backsliders and disbelievers — they will burn forever in a lake of fire. Because, be not deceived, brothers and sisters, God is not mocked. For whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.…”

The organ came in on cue and everyone stood, up as the lady in grey sang again, sang the only hymn Mrs. Hill had ever sung, in her cracked, phlegmy voice. She sang it so often Elizabeth learned the words and hummed along, not wanting to intrude or do the wrong thing, until Mrs. Hill called her into her bedroom one evening and said, “Sing,” and they had sat up together in Mrs. Hill’s bed, their hands in a pile and night falling fast, singing “ ‘Why should I feel discouraged, why do the shadows come, / why should my heart be lonely and long for heaven and home, / when Jesus is my portion, my constant friend is he, / for his eye is on the sparrow and I know he’s watching me, / and I know he’s watching me-e-e-e,’ ” and Mrs. Hill touched Elizabeth’s face with paper-dry fingertips and said, “You’re the sparrow, girl”; and Elizabeth thought that this was family, dirty dishes and unappreciated treasures, the low friendly buzz of TV and two stiff fingers tapping her cheek, a full embrace of all-believing, all-hoping, all-enduring love in the face of deceit and pretense and the unchangeable past and the inevitable end.

Back at the house, the church ladies bustled and clucked and spread cloths over flat surfaces and laid out a ruby-red ham, banquet platters of fried chicken, roasting pans of macaroni and cheese, three-bean salad, warm greens with sliding grey-pink chunks of fatback, two coconut cakes, a chess pie, and one towering, lightly sweating lemon meringue pie. They arranged and rearranged in a serious way, serious about the food and serious about grief (of which there was not much and even Elizabeth could tell that Dr. Hill, refusing to sit down, calmly sipping a cup of tea, was not the kind of mourner the Stewardesses warmed up to), and serious about their role.

Gus Lester uncovered the chicken and sliced the ham in a proprietary way, and when Elizabeth came through to the table, they locked eyes.

Elizabeth said, “Hello, Mr. Lester.” When he didn’t respond, she said, “I was wondering if I could have Huddie’s address,” and saw in his face the open wish to do her harm.

Dr. Hill came out of the bedroom holding a neat paper-bag package.

“Here, Elizabeth, this is for you.” She shoved the package into Elizabeth’s hands, and Elizabeth turned it over a few times, wanting to shake it for a clue about the contents, certain that funeral protocol could not be the same as birthday protocol.

“You can open it now if you want. It’s those spoons of hers.”

How many? Elizabeth wondered, and took out the nine spoons and thought that if Dr. Hill did not cry at her mother’s funeral, Elizabeth certainly had no business weeping over spoons she’d tried to steal and the hundreds of cups of tea they’d had and the way in which even Huddie, banished forever, was closer to Elizabeth now than Mrs. Hill would ever be.