Getting Mother’s Body

Snipes got on a yellow shiny shirt to match his face. He’s wearing a suit jacket that don’t match his pants. That’s his style. His shirt is dark with sweat and when my daddy turns him away he will fold up his sample book and stand outside at his car, taking a clean shirt out and tossing the sweated shirt in the trunk. I seen him do it last time he came through.

“Jackson’s Funeral is gonna be fifty in twelve years,” Snipes says smiling, still trying to make a sale. “That’s a heritage to be proud of.”

“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.

June Flowers Beede

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.

Roosevelt Beede

“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.

“Course you ain’t.”

“I’ll bet you on what it says in here,” Dill says.

“I don’t got shit to bet with,” I says. It’s funny but neither of us laugh.

“Let’s bet you’ll take up preaching again,” Dill says.

I don’t say nothing to that.

We sit there watching Billy turn into a speck as she hurries down the road to Jackson’s Formal. Mrs. Jackson sells dresses and together with her husband Israel they run the Funeral Home too. Laz helps out. When people start they lives they ain’t nothing more than specks. And when Billy came into our life, coming up the road in Dill’s old truck, coming back from LaJunta and the tragedy, she weren’t nothing more than a speck on the road, and then a truck, and then Dill in a truck and then Dill in a truck with little Billy. We thought Billy was gonna live with Dill like her and Willa Mae did when Willa Mae was living, but Dill didn’t want Billy around no more so Billy’s been living with us since she was ten.

“LaJunta, Arizona,” Dill says, reading the postmark. I hold my hand out for the envelope and she hands it to me. A circle with some lines running through it and some marks and a stamp. Below that some marks that say “Miss Billy Beede c/o Dill Smiles, Lincoln, Texas.” But the lines could say “Mr. John F. Kennedy, President of the United States, Warshington, D.C.” for all I know. I never did learn to read. June and Billy read good though. Dill reads pretty good too.

June comes outside. Her crutch tapping the floor like someone’s knocking. She looks at Dill’s truck, a shiny blue Chevrolet, parked off to the side of the pumps.

“That yr new truck, Dill?” June asks.

“Bought it with pig money,” Dill says.

“We could read this now,” I says, fanning the envelope, “it would spark up the day.”

“We’ll wait,” June says. “It’s addressed to Billy so it’s only right to wait for her.”

“Like Billy gives a crap,” Dill says. “She was glad when her mother passed, said so herself.”

“She didn’t mean it,” June says.

“You and Roosevelt don’t got no kids and Billy’s your niece, that’s how come you think that way, but I’m telling you Billy was glad when Willa passed. Billy said ‘good riddance’ and clapped her hands. I was there. I heard and seen it all,” Dill says, retelling us the tragedy.

We sit quiet. If I could give June children I would. If June could give me children she would.

“Candy’s got the grave to keep up plus she runs that motel,” June says.

“How much money you think Candy’s gonna want from us this time?” I ask.

“Do it matter?” Dill says. “You can’t send her none nohow.”

“But we always write her back polite,” June says. “And Candy always finds a way to hold on.”

“She don’t ask me for money cause she knows I won’t send her none and I won’t write her back polite neither,” Dill says.

“The bank’s gonna take her motel one of these days,” I says. I should know. I had a church, a nice church over in Tryler before me and June corned here. It was the most beautiful church you ever seen. And the bank took it.

“Ma always finds a way to hold on,” Dill says.

“Plus she got Even helping out now,” June says. Even is Candy’s daughter. Dill’s sister but by a different daddy.

“Ma always finds a way to make do,” Dill says.

“How come she asking us for payment, then?” June asks.

“She’s what you call resourceful,” Dill says.

June says “huh” to that.

A car comes up, out-of-towners. White. I give them two dollars worth of gas.

“You got a restroom?” the lady asks.

“No, ma’am, we don’t.”

“We shoulda stopped at a Texaco,” the man says. And they go on.

“You all should build a restroom,” Dill says.

June says “huh” to that too. If we could get the money together to build a restroom June would be the one to clean it. It would be Billy’s chore but Billy ain’t as timely at her chores as June is, even though June only got the one leg.

“Ma asked you all for fifty dollars payment last time,” Dill laughs, “this time she’ll probably ask for sixty.”

“Candy can ask all she wants,” June says. “I got a whole dictionary full of words I can say no to her nice with.”

“I know the pain of losing a structure,” I says. When the bank told me they was gonna take my church I went to the bank and got down on my knees.

“I know the pain of losing a structure too,” June says.

We sit there for a while. Not saying nothing. The white out-of-towners leave a cloud of brownish dust in the road.

“It’s worth it, keeping on good terms with Candy, even if we can’t never send her nothing,” I says.

Dill picks up my thought, “You mean cause of the treasure? You mean cause Willa Mae’s buried out there with her pearls and diamonds?”

“No. I was thinking more along the lines of, what with Candy being your mother and you having partly raised Billy some, that makes Candy practically family to us and we should keep on good terms with her,” I says, but I am thinking about the diamonds and whatnot. I can’t help it.

“Yr just thinking about the treasure,” Dill says, smirking at me.

I stay quiet.

June adds her two cents. “I’m thinking all that treasure Willa Mae got in her coffin ain’t doing no one no good,” she says. She clumps along the porch, reaching the steps and sitting down, laying her crutch by her side. There’s a blank space where her leg used to be. I ain’t never seen her with two legs. When I met her she had just the one. Folks say I was smart marrying a woman with one leg cause a woman with one leg ain’t never gonna run off. But I didn’t marry June on account of that. June’s a good woman. Today she’s salty but most days she’s sweet.

“What you think of Billy’s Snipes fella?” Dill asks.

“We ain’t met him yet,” I says. “She says he stays at Texhoma. We should be going up there for the wedding.”

“We should be going to LaJunta and getting Willa Mae’s treasure,” June says.

“Leave my sister in the ground,” I says.

“I ain’t saying take her out the ground,” June says yelling. “I’m just saying take her treasury out the ground.” Then her voice goes soft. “Just enough to get me a leg,” she says.

“You got a point there,” I says. I look at Dill, waiting for her say. Getting at least some of my sister’s treasure has crossed my mind more than once. Dill would tell us how to get there or we could just look at a map. LaJunta’s in Arizona and Candy’s motel is called the Pink Flamingo. That wouldn’t be no trouble. June suggested the very thing about six years ago and Dill told June that if she went treasure-hunting, she would be going against the wishes of the dead. Dill’s the one who heard Willa’s dying wish and Dill’s the one who put Willa in the ground, so to my mind, if Dill don’t give the OK and we was just to go out there and dig, it would be like stealing.

Dill speaks through her teeth. “Yr waiting for me to say go head but I ain’t gonna say it,” she says. “Willa Mae was proud of two things. Her pearl necklace and her diamond ring. Getting buried with them two things was her dying wish. I coulda took them, I coulda stole them from her while she was breathing her last breaths, but I weren’t about to go against her dying wish. So I put her in the ground and I put her jewelry in the ground with her,” Dill says, saying “jewel” and making it sound like “jurl.” “Willa Mae wanted to be buried with her jewels and that’s what she still wants,” Dill says.

“How you know what Willa still wants?” June says.

“She ain’t changing her mind once she’s dead,” Dill says.

“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.

Billy Beede

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.”

Willa Mae Beede

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.

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

He says he’ll put me down there in it

And put my boyfriend in it too.

He says he’s just pulling my leg, but I got to play it safe

He says he’s just pulling my leg, but I got to play it safe

I done packed up all my clothes, I’m gonna leave this big old holey place.

Everybody’s got a Hole. Ain’t nobody ever lived who don’t got a Hole in them somewheres. When I say Hole you know what I’m talking about, dontcha? Soft spot, sweet spot, opening, blind spot, Itch, Gap, call it what you want but I call it a Hole. To get the best of a situation you gotta know a man’s Hole. Everybody’s got one, just don’t everybody got one in the same place. Some got a Hole in they head. Now, you may think “Hole in the head” is just another way of saying stupid, but “Hole in the head” means more than that. It means that they got a lack and a craving for knowledge. Not just the lack, now, but the craving too. A man could have a Hole just about anywheres: in the head, in the wallet (which means he burns his money), in the pocket (which means he don’t got no money to burn but would like some), in the pants, in the guts, in the stomach, in the heart. You offer a person with a Hole in the head some knowledge and they gonna be in yr pocket cause you done gived him the opportunity to taste what he craves, but if a person’s got a Hole in they heart and you offer them knowledge, you won’t be able to sway them none. A Hole-in-the-heart person craves company and kindness, not no book.