Serves him right. Truly poetic justice!
Somebody—the hospital claims it can’t make out the signature—has had his body carted off to a white funeral home!
When they took Aunt Stella to the only funeral home in Clearwater several years ago, the whole church was so upset at the thought of her being made up by a white mortician they retrieved her body and sent it to a black one fifty miles away.
But that was then, and that was Aunt Stella. Nobody here would give a damn who prettied up Mr. Fordham’s black behind for the hot place. And I wouldn’t give a damn about helping with the send-off, either, if it weren’t for Mama. Why she volunteered to get involved in it, is beyond me. So what if his live-in lover was somewhere in California for a month when the guy croaked? The body could have waited for her to get back. Mama didn’t have to step up.
But she did, and here I am, driving us to Brandon Brothers funeral home to help process everything for this stranger I’ve never met, but heard enough about.
Okay, to be perfectly honest, I do understand Mama, partly. She had loved Fordham once, years ago, and that’s why I agreed to give her a hand with this item of business. That’s all it is to her, I have no doubt, just an item of business. I know for a fact Mama didn’t love the man one second beyond that third time she caught him with another woman thirty-some years ago. She just feels a Christian obligation now, since no one else is around to take care of it. She will do it for Christ. I will do it for her. Neither of us will be doing it for Fordham.
I turn left on Sycamore. Oh god I hope I don’t have to see the body. We’ll just hand over the suit, then pick out the box, then sit in a small room at a cluttered desk to haggle price with a bald little white man, like buying something on the street in Tijuana.
Left on Market. Mama is silent. I hate funerals. To this day I still get the shivers just to think of brushing against the casket as people file past. I’ve seen people actually resting their hands on it, or even kissing the body!
“I know how you feel.” The first words since we left the house are Mama’s. She is dressed for church to meet the mortician and make the arrangements. “But it’s not like you think. Your father loved you. I know he did.”
Yeah, right, I felt like saying, I could tell from all those Sundays we spent together.
I knew it was she who loved me, not Fordham. It didn’t matter which words she employed to tell me. In my thirty-nine years, I had seen and heard her say it countless ways.
It was four or five more blocks of silence before Mama tried again. “You know, David, there is something I have never told you about your father. I was planning to tell you when you were old enough, but I never did. It will help you understand.”
What? I snapped to awareness as though I’d been dozing at the wheel and had a near miss. It had been years since I had stopped trying to imagine what kind of information could possibly vindicate this guy Fordham.
“What I have never told you, is the reason your father never contacted you.”
Issues I’d closed the file on after decades of processing popped up unexpectedly like a screen saver suddenly activating—and as unresolved as they had ever been. My childhood fantasy of having a father after all, exploded in my head again and ran slowly down my body like something both warm and scary. It occurred to me that we can throw stuff in the trash every day for years, but there is no regular pick-up. The garbage men don’t come and get it until they’re there for you. Little Eddy Logan, for example, popped out of his folder in the back of my memory files and recited his third-grade reading to the class again, as flawlessly as ever.
“‘My Daddy,’” Eddy started. The teacher’s assignment had been to tell the class about “somebody in your life.” Eddy talked about what they did together, where they went. But the part I have always remembered best was what he said last. He said, “...And whenever I bring my report card home, Daddy looks at it, and then he looks at me, and he says, ‘Daddy’s so proud of his little boy.’” Eddy giggled. And every time I looked at Eddy after that, I thought I saw a glow on his face. He had something I would never know. A week later I buried my own face in the doily on the arm of the big, overstuffed maroon chair in our living room when nobody was there, and cried more painfully than I ever had before.
I stuff Eddy back into File Thirteen and look at Mama, still waiting for her to continue.
“Well..., what is it?” I finally ask. “Why didn’t he ever want to see me?”
“It was because of me,” she says. “I told your father I never wanted to see him again. I told him not to come back, and to stay away from you and your brothers too. It was me.”
“That’s it? That’s the reason? That’s what you haven’t told me all these years?” Honestly, did she really think that would work? Fordham related to his four kids like molecules of nothing because she said to stay away?
“Okay,” I say, “tell me then, what did you do with all the cards and letters and presents? Did you destroy each one as it arrived, or did you save them and they’re bursting the seams of several closets somewhere right now? I mean, since he really loved us.”
She looks straight ahead. I see the loose, old skin on her face and how it has worn around the creases, hair that has withstood a lifetime of management, eyes that have watched so many documentaries in real time. I try to imagine how she was when she first thought happiness was on order—the ecstasy she must have felt when Fordham first touched her young hair and kissed her unweathered chocolatey skin. When did she get over Fordham?
I am instantly sorry I yelled at this saint who raised us with more love than a dozen parents. And I hate that a grown, educated man can still allow the hurt to lash out at one who deserves none of it. I pull over to the curb. Mama looks at me and thinks my sudden sadness comes from an emptiness related to Fordham. She long ago became adept at wiping away her children’s sadness from that deep well. But she assumes wrong this time.
“Mama..., you don’t have to. You don’t even need to try. We’re big boys now. Think about yourself today. Just you.”
She nods thoughtfully and turns her face to the passenger window. This might be the first time in thirty-seven years she’s needed solace enough to accept it. I pull back into traffic for the last few blocks, then turn into Brandon Brothers and stop. Mama grabs the navy blue suit from the back seat before I can reach for it, and we walk into the scenario that turns out to be just as I had imagined it, in nearly every particular. I just hadn’t pictured the little bald man reassuring us several times that he had worked on “our people” before. I don’t think it bothered Mama, I mean she is a woman with sixty years of experience being black; and all I could do was pray that Fordham was somewhere having to listen to every patronizing word the man said before putting those clammy little hands all over his corpse.
As it turned out, I didn’t have to see the body, but Mama had to identify it. She said I didn’t have to go in. I think she meant she wanted to do it alone. She didn’t come out for twenty or thirty minutes and it seemed clear she didn’t want to have a conversation about it on the way home. I caught myself feeling almost proud of my record—I still hadn’t seen my own dad in all my life, that I could remember.
All three of my brothers were at Mama’s house when we got home. They seemed to think a barrage of derogatory remarks about Fordham was what Mama needed. Carl said to me, “Did you see him? Don’t even tell me what he looked like, I don’t wanna know.” When I said nothing, Carl looked as though something too terrible to talk about might have happened.
Mama didn’t go to the funeral. None of us went. Someone had tracked down Fordham’s girlfriend and she came back from California. Mama didn’t want to go anyway.
But I did take Mama back to Brandon Brothers before the funeral—the next day after she identified the body. The mortician had insisted she come back to see his handiwork. And there was more paperwork to complete.
A young man at a desk in the lobby—just a boy really, but wearing a suit—greeted us with practiced solemnity. “Would you like to see Mr. Fordham?” he asked.
“Well..., yes, I guess so,” Mama said, but I could tell she felt no need to see him again.
“Sure, just step this way.”
I sat down in the lobby. Mama followed the boy through tall double doors with inlaid panels and dark varnish. I could hear him whisper something to Mama about leaving her alone now, and taking all the time she wanted. He came back into the lobby, smiled some respect at me, and sat down at his desk.
Mama returned after only a moment, and the boy told her Mr. Brandon would see her now. I told Mama I’d wait in the car.
But I think I had known all along, deep inside, that I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life having never seen Fordham. I got up and stood before the heavy doors for a moment, as if studying the woodwork up close. When I pushed them open, I saw, at the end of a long aisle that divided folding chairs into two sections, the box we had picked out. The lid was open and the puffy lining was flipped over the edge of the casket. I could see his head. It looked very dark against the white, a lot darker than me. I strode down the aisle with a certain confidence, like I was well prepared for this meeting—the same way I’m prepared for meetings with my boss. I am always well prepared. I know before I go into the room exactly what I want to say, and I make sure I don’t leave the room until everything I had planned to say is said. I never go it on the fly.
“So it was you,” I say, stopping a foot away from the casket. “So you’re the one that dissed my Mama big-time. Is that what you really look like, or is this just a white man’s interpretation?”
No answer.
“You know,” I continue, “the world is full of jerks. So I am never surprised when I run into one.”
I’m having to lean too far, so I step a little closer. I am wondering how they keep flies off bodies in mortuaries. Maybe the formaldehyde or whatever they use is a repellent. Still, imagine if a fly....
Yep, those are my ears all right. My ears. I stare at Fordham’s forehead and try to see inside. What was he thinking all those years?
There’s a bit of a mustache. I doubt it was entirely black when they brought him in here. He’s pretty good looking. I can see him holding Mama at twenty-one.
His hands look natural. I wonder if they are sewn together to keep them in place. I stare at the top one and see it holding an ice cream cone. Did it ever? And did it ever hand one to a little boy, anywhere? Did that hand ever whack any kid upside the head?
I lean on the box for support. I try to see the other hand. I study the line around its edge where the color changes from dark to light. That very hand once held mine. This is the closest our hands have been since then. I want to touch my daddy again—touch him when I can remember how it feels. This is my only chance.
But I can’t.
I work my way up to the face again. Mr. Fordham, huh? I didn’t even have his name.
His lips are full, and I guess you could say sensuous. I remember overhearing Mama once, when I was little, telling a girlfriend how she thought great lips were so sexy she wondered why there wasn’t a law that said people had to keep them covered. Are these the lips she talked about? They are the lips that never said “Happy birthday.”
I can see Eddy Logan, and I want that glow.... When I open my mouth to say the words, a flood runs in and I taste the salt: “Say it, you bastard. Go ahead, say it!”
I can see the lips move. David, Son, your Daddy is so proud of his little boy!
The puffy quilting on the edge of the box is my doily now, absorbing my tears as I empty the garbage.
When at last it’s done, I get up, review that everything there was to see and say, has been seen and said, and turn around to go. But Mr. Fordham seems to think he’s on a roll. I saw your report on Changing World last week. You done good, Boy. You done good!
“Yeah, right,” I reply out loud. I turn around and grasp the top of the lid. “Yo, Man... I’m sorry buddy—but the cryin’s over. It’s over.” The lid drops easily and quietly onto the cushioned edge of the box.
I walk the long aisle to the double doors wondering how much of a difference this will make on my life when it begins at forty next week. I push open the doors to the lobby, and there’s my brother Carl.
“So you just had to see him too!” I said, heading for the door to the parking lot. “He’s all yours. You’ll have to open the lid.”
“But I’m not here for him,” Carl replied as he followed me out the door.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________
Copyright © 1999 by Larry Hallock
The idea for this dark story was developed from a single sentence spoken
by an African-American friend, which I happened to overhear at a party.
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