travis said it was gonna be nasty. my mama said it was gonna be rough.
i walked up the ramp heading to the doors expecting to see a huge room all full of white--white walls, white roses, white floor except for a red velvet carpet paving the aisle between rows and rows of white chairs--and everybody cloaked in black from head to toe, all wailing, screeching at the tops of their lungs, spilling over the sides of chairs onto the floor, struggling in slow motion to make it to the white casket holding uncle bobby at the front of the room. i braced myself for uncomfort and tears upon tears upon tears; for black veils and an unconsolable widow, arms pinned by now-fatherless children barely together themselves. a slow haunting organ playing by itself in the corner. it was all waiting behind the doors to the back entrance to Perryman's Mortuary.
the mortuary is right around the corner from my house, right at the corner of 35th and broadway. ive always wondered about it. perryman's face was always on the back of the posterboard fans laid out for us on the back pews at church and his face was always on at least one billboard in the west end. i thought he was famous when i was younger. today was the first time i saw him face to face, heard his voice. i remember that its distinctive enough to remember, a kind that ive never heard before, but somehow i managed to forget it. he's short, not much taller than me, and cockeyed. he seemed to me a very serious but bumbling man, and the interior of the building seemed to support that assessment.
it looked just like a regular sized house transformed into a viewing area. rooms that would normally contain a living room suite, a kitchenette, twin beds, and coffee tables were filled instead with chairs, arrangements made of aged synthetic flowers clinging to fading floral wallpaper, a small organ that i instinctively knew hasnt worked in years. a business desk, a file cabinet. the rooms were all titled, all named after people i assume were important to perryman in life, but now are dead. it felt as if the very bodies of those people were cradled somehow inside the wood molding beneath their names, all looking down, watching us move. it was creepy, for lack of a better word. still, it had all the familiarity of a regular house.
the room was gaudy. it was full of the frilly treasures cherished by people taught by life to find the beauty in absolutely everything, no matter how showy or over-the-top--a plastic pink and gold tissue box, empty on the inside, bogged by dust on the outside. ornate mirrors meant to reflect only the head and shoulders but much too big to do only that, shaped like stars and churches with frosted flowers in the corners. and porcelain. lots and lots of porcelain. a white porcelain angel and candle holder, both wreathed with dusty burgundy synthetic flowers. a row of what appeared to be crude replicas of middle aged houses. porcelain statues of something or the other--peacocks or angels or bibles--with painted on ribbons and a final mother-of-pearlish looking gloss. cheap trinkets. the room was cluttered with them. i sat uncomfortably trying not to notice.
im getting ahead of myself.
before i sat, i walked through the doors after kissing some cousins hello. it was just my mother and i. i wore a black sweater, way too hot for today's weather, gray slacks, and grown up pointy-toed high-heeled shoes. i imagined that i had the sort of appearance that makes long-lost family members look at someone and shake their head in disbelief, at how adult and graceful and sophisticated they've become. it was the shoes. i felt like a different person, very outside myself.
i looked nice, though.
i followed behind my mother, stepping carefully so as not to fall--the carpet didnt agree too well with my heels--and waved at family as we walked up to the front of the room there uncle bobby lay. neither i nor my mother walked up to stand near him and gaze at him as you're supposed to do at funerals. i stood behind my mother as she signed our names in the visitor's book and glanced quickly at him. in death, as in life, he resembled a black version of colonel sanders (the kentucky fried chicken guy). he balded in that same sort of pattern. his hair, mustache, and beard were all a shock of unruly white rough-feeling cotton. he walked with a cane like the colonel. i imagined that it too laid in the coffin next to him. his skin was ashen. very dead looking. for black people, that's always the give away; as older women in huge sunday hats and visiting church members stand by caskets and talk about how 'laaaaaaaaawd, it look like he layin there sleep, dont it?' the skin of a dead black person is always there to undermind their observation. he was his normal color, it seemed, only duller and dusted with flour. i looked long enough to see the crack between the closed lids of his right eye. then i turned away to face the row of widow and daughters and sons behind me.
i kissed cousin dewayne. i kissed cousin dorothy. she told me how pretty i looked and i smiled and thanked her. then i came to aunt tennie and she leaned over to the woman sitting next to her, whom i didnt recognize, and whispered meaning for me to hear,
'and here comes the bad one, right there.'
i got dramatic and bugged my eyes and let my jaw hit my chest. 'aunt tennie!!!' she laughed. 'im not bad on sundays!!' i leaned in to kiss her. her cheek was soft; it didnt have the feeling of having been cascaded by tears and rubbed raw by anxious palms and kleenex. she didn't cry the whole time my mother and i were there.
no one did, in fact. well, except my mother.
we went to sit next to morgan, one of uncle bobby & tennie's sons, and his daughters and neice. the girls seemed oblivious to their dead grandfather lying just beyond their view. they chattered and laughed and danced around and carried on as if they were on a playground. i held two conflicting thoughts concerning them: my initial thought was it must be nice to not be touched by the reality check death brings, the heart-stopping shock of a reminder that our next step is promised to no one and that at any time we can be less one person we'd die for.
my next thought was that if they didnt sit they lil asses down and show some respect i was gon snatch them up myself since daddy/uncle morgan wasnt doin nothin.
but then i realized that he was tired. his daughters laughing was the least of his problems right then. still, he held up well and didn't cry. he didn't seem to show any emotion at all; he just sort of sat and looked tired, which leads those who see him into thinking that he must have been down a pretty rough road to get there.
in the middle of all their chatter and my cousin morgan's weak, friendly smiles at incoming visitors, i glanced at my mother and noticed her nose was read. i looked quickly away and quickly back and saw her eyes rimming with tears. its a funny thing, when my mother cries. she never does so comfortably. she always does so with her back locked in whatever position she was in at the onset of the little sting u get in ur tearducts when u feel the tears coming forth, and she appears to be holding her breath, trying to keep everything from spilling out, and she frowns and looks like she's simply waiting out a passing pain, an excrutiating one. and it always passes. she never looks for any arms to collapse into or any shoulder to soak w/ her tears. i resolved not to pity her and offer mine. i gave her a few squares of the tissue i had in my purse (yes, i carried a purse) and patted her leg a few times. then she was fine.
as we sat, i didn't exactly know what to do. i was cordial and receptive and welcoming to everyone. i kept my smile quick and my face soft for visitors and family members passing through the area. when no one was around to talk to, i obsessed over rememberin the names of all the flowers i saw in the room. roses. carnations. irises. baby's breath, lots of baby's breath (baby's breath for the dead.. rather poetic, no?). i grew anxious when i saw flowers and couldn't put names to them. the longer i stared at the stalk of white flowers that almost looked like snapdragons but clearly werent, the harder i imagined grains of time grinding into my fingers as it ran out of my hands. i dont have time to forget flowers. i have to remember them all, gotta learn as many as i can while im still here. what is that? spikey petals.. i know i know what it is, ive seen it before. think think think think.. shit, what *is* it? i wonder if uncle bobby knew what it is. i hope so. it 's too late now.
finally i remembered that it was a kind of dhalia. i felt a little better. never did place that stalk of almost-snap dragons, though.
as we sat, a man with a walker entered the room, but it was the funniest thing--he didn't seem to need it. he was speeding around, movin faster than anyone else in there. he was short, very slim, and had a face that was both very old and very young at the same time. he first wheeled over to the casket and looked at uncle bobby. then he came back to where my mother, cousin morgan, his girls, and i were sitting. he looked each of us in the eye as he spoke, very bold and serious without being intimidating.
'Patterson,' he said loudly. he then said how he knew uncle bobby but i didn't hear him. morgan later told us that he grew up with uncle bobby, knew him since they were children. 'Hazard, Kentucky.' he drove a long way to be there that day. i decided to like him then. he shook each of our hands; very, very firm shake (i am always impressed with firm handshakes), but they were soft and wet with moisture, probably from the vicegrip he had on the handles of his walker. morgan then took him over to introduce him to aunt tennie and dorothy. i was impressed with him. i probably wouldn't have done anything but signed the book and spoke to those i knew; i definitely woulnd't have gone alone if i knew i wldn't know anybody there. but he was bold, and on his way back out he said to morgan,
'your father was a great, marvelous man.'
thank you for saying that, morgan smiled back.
'no, i mean that, i wouldnt have said it if it wasnt true.' morgan spoke with him with a constant smile. mr. patterson never did, he kept an intense, serious stare fixated on morgan.
well of course he was, he was my daddy! he laughed.
'nope. that's not why he was a great man. you know why he was a great man? cause he was a servant of the lord.'
if that conversation would have been muted, i would have figured mr. patterson to be mean with no softness about him at all, but we all knew better. i would have liked to have spent some time talking with him but he left soon after he entered.
everyone else fussed over my hair and told me how pretty i was, so much so that i felt a little uncomfortabe and was very aware of my shoes. i blamed them but i knew better; they always do that lately. i smiled and blushed and finally noticed that no one seemed sad except my mother for a few moments. murrell jr. seemed very somber. he didn't speak much to me; he's usually very interested in my schooling when i see him @ the family reunion. and at funerals, of course. they're the two things that bring all of us together. he seemed to be ignoring everyone.
