Jodi Picoult - Small Great Things

When everyone has had a chance to file by, Pastor Harold starts the service. “Ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters…this is not a sad day,” he says. He smiles gently at my niece Tyana, who’s sobbing into little Zhanice’s tiny Bantu knots. “This is a happy day, for we are here to celebrate our beloved friend and mother and grandmother, Louanne Brooks, who is finally at peace and walking beside the Lord. Let us begin with prayer.”

I bow my head, but sneak a glance around the church, which groans at the seams with well-wishers. They all look like us, except for Ms. Mina and Christina, and in the back, Kennedy McQuarrie and an older woman.

It surprises me to see her here, but then, of course she knows about Mama. I was at her house when I heard.

Still, it feels like a blurred line, like wine and cheese at her home was. Like I am trying to put her in a box and she keeps escaping the confines.

“Our friend Louanne was born in 1940,” the pastor says, “to Jermaine and Maddie Brooks, the youngest of four. She had two daughters, and made the best of her life after their daddy left, raising them to be good, strong women. She devoted her life to serving others, creating a happy home for the family that employed her for over fifty years. She won more ribbons at our church fair for her pies and cakes than anyone else in this congregation, and I do believe that at least ten pounds around my middle can be credited to Lou’s sweets. She loved gospel music and The View and baking and Jesus, and is survived by her daughters and her six beloved grandchildren.”

The choir sings Mama’s favorite hymns: “Take My Hand, Precious Lord,” and “I’ll Fly Away.” Then the pastor returns to the podium. He lifts his eyes to the congregation. “God is good!” he calls.

“All the time!” everyone responds.

“And He has called His angel home to glory!”

After a round of Amen s, he invites those so moved to stand and witness the impact Mama made on their lives. I watch some of her friends get up, moving slowly, as if they know they might be next. She helped me through breast cancer, one says . She taught me how to sew a hem. She never lost at bingo . It is illuminating-I knew Mama in one way, but to them, she was something different-a teacher, a confidante, a partner in crime. As their stories shape who Mama used to be, people are crying, rocking, calling out their praise.

Adisa squeezes my hand, and takes to the podium. “My mama,” she says, “was strict.” The crowd laughs at this truth. “She was strict about manners, and homework, and dating, and how much bare skin we could show when we went out in public. There was a ratio, right, Ruth? It changed depending on the season, but it cramped my style year-round.” Adisa smiles faintly, turning in to herself. “I remember how once, she put out a place setting at the dinner table for my attitude, and she told me, Girl, when you leave the table, that can stay behind .”

Oh yes she did, I hear behind me.

“The thing is, I was a wild child. Maybe I still am. And Mama rode us on things that other parents never seemed to care about. At the time, it seemed so unfair. I asked her what difference it would make in God’s grand scheme if I wore a red pleather miniskirt, and she said something I will never forget. Rachel, she told me, I got precious little time for you to belong to me. I’m gonna make sure it isn’t any shorter than it has to be. I was too young, and too much of a rabble-rouser, to understand what she meant. But now I do. See, what I didn’t realize back then was the flip side of that coin: I had precious little time for her to be my mama.”

Teary, she steps down, and I stand up. To be honest, I didn’t know Adisa could be such a good speaker, but then again, she has always been the brave one. Me, I recede into the background. I had not wanted to talk at the funeral, but Adisa said people would be expecting it, and so I did. Tell a story, she suggested. So I take the podium, clearing my throat, and grip the edge of the wood with overwhelming panic. “Thank you,” I say, and the microphone squeals. I step back. “Thank you for coming out to say goodbye to Mama. She would have loved knowing you all cared, and if you hadn’t come you know she’d be up in Heaven throwing shade about your manners.” I glance out-that was supposed to be a joke, but no one is really laughing.

Swallowing, I forge on. “Mama always put herself last. You all know that she’d feed anyone and everyone-God forbid you ever left our home hungry. Like Pastor Harold, I bet all of you have had her blue-ribbon pies and cakes. Once, she was baking a Black Forest cake for a church contest, and I insisted on helping. I was of the age where I was no help at all, of course. At some point, I dropped the measuring spoon into the batter and was too embarrassed to tell her, so it got baked into the cake. When the judge at the contest cut into the cake, and found the spoon, Mama knew exactly what had happened. But instead of getting mad at me, she told the judge it was a special trick she used to make the cake moist. You probably remember how the next year, several of the cakes entered in the contest had metal measuring spoons baked inside them-well, now you know why.” There is a titter of laughter, and I let out a breath I had not even realized I’d been holding. “I heard people say Mama was proud of her ribbons, of her baking, but you know, that isn’t true. She worked hard at that. She worked hard at everything. Pride, she would tell us, is a sin. And in fact the only thing I ever saw her take pride in was me and my sister.”

As I say the words, I remember the look on her face when I told her about the indictment. Ruth, she had said, when I came home from jail and she wanted to see me face-to-face, to make sure I was all right, how could this happen to you? I knew what she meant. I was her golden child. I had escaped the cycle. I had achieved. I had busted through the ceiling she spent her life butting her head against. “She was so proud of me,” I repeat, but the words are viscous, balloons that pop when they hit the air, that leave a faint stench of disappointment.

It’s all right, baby, I hear, from the crowd. And: Mm-hmm, you okay.

My mother never said as much, but was she still proud of me? Was it enough that I was her daughter? Or was the fact that I was on trial for a murder I didn’t commit like one of those stains she worked so hard to get out?

There is more to my speech, but it is gone. The words on my little index card might as well be written in hieroglyphs. I stare at them, but nothing makes sense anymore. I can’t imagine a world where I might go to prison for years. I can’t imagine a world where my mother isn’t.

Then I remember something she told me once, the night I went to Christina’s slumber party. When you’re ready for us, we’ll be waiting on you. At that moment, I feel another presence I haven’t felt before. Or maybe one I never noticed. It’s solid as a wall, and warm to the skin. It’s a community of people who know my name, even when I don’t always remember theirs. It’s a congregation that never stopped praying for me, even when I flew from the nest. It’s friends I did not know I had, who have memories of me that I’ve pushed so far to the back of my mind, I’ve forgotten.

I hear the flow of the fountain behind me, and I think about water, how it might rise above its station as mist, flirt at being a cloud, and return as rain. Would you call that falling? Or coming home?

I don’t know how long I stand there, weeping. Adisa comes to me, her shawl open like the great black wings of a heron. She wraps me in the feathers of unconditional love. She bears me away.