Getting Mother’s Body

Getting Mother’s Body

A NOVEL

Suzan-Lori Parks

For Francis Amnion — the first Texan I ever met.

And, of course, for Paul.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Billy Beede

Snipes

Laz Jackson

June Flowers Beede

Roosevelt Beede

Billy Beede

Willa Mae Beede

Mrs. Faith Jackson

Dill Smiles

June Flowers Beede

Roosevelt Beede

Billy Beede

Willa Mae Beede

Alberta Snipes

Fat Junior Lenoir

Dr. Parker

June Flowers Beede

Mr. Israel Jackson

Dill Smiles

Willa Mae Beede

Mrs. Ruthie Montgomery

Billy Beede

Roosevelt Beede

Billy Beede

Dill Smiles

Laz Jackson

June Flowers Beede

Roosevelt Beede

Billy Beede

June Flowers Beede

Estelle “Star” Beede Rochfoucault

Dill Smiles

Willa Mae Beede

Homer Beede Rochfoucault

Roosevelt Beede

Laz Jackson

Willa Mae Beede

Billy Beede

Officer Masterson

Homer Beede Rochfoucault

June Flowers Beede

Billy Beede

Willa Mae Beede

Roosevelt Beede

Billy Beede

Willa Mae Beede

Billy Beede

Dill Smiles

Laz Jackson

Uncle Blood Beede

Precious Beede

Willa Mae Beede

Dill Smiles

Birdie

Candy Napoleon

Laz Jackson

Willa Mae Beede

Billy Beede

Roosevelt Beede

Willa Mae Beede

Dill Smiles

Homer Beede Rochfoucault

June Flowers Beede

Roosevelt Beede

Candy Napoleon

Dill Smiles

Willa Mae Beede

Billy Beede

Laz Jackson

Willa Mae Beede

Billy Beede

About the Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

Billy Beede

“Where my panties at?” I asks him.

Snipes don’t say nothing. He don’t like to talk when he’s in the middle of it.

“I think I lost my panties,” I says but Snipes ain’t hearing. He got his eyes closed, his mouth smiling, his face wet with sweat. In the middle of it, up there on top of me, going in and out. Not on top of me really, more like on top of the side of me cause he didn’t want my baby-belly getting in his way. He didn’t say so, he ain’t said nothing bout the baby yet, but I seen him looking at my belly and I know he’s thinking about it, somewhere in his mind. We’re in the backseat of his Galaxie. A Ford. Bright lemon colored outside, inside the color of new butter. My head taps against the door handle as he goes at it.

“Huh. Huh. Huh,” Snipes goes.

In a minute my head’s gonna hurt. But it don’t hurt yet.

“Where—” I go but he draws his finger down over my lips, hushing them so I don’t finish, then he rubs my titty, moving his hand in a quick circle like he’s polishing it. I try scootching down along the seat, away from the door, but when I scootch, Snipes’ going at it scootches me right back up against the door handle again. I wonder if my baby’s sitting in me upside down and if Snipes’ thing is hitting it on its head like the door handle is hitting me on mines.

“Ow,” I go. Cause now my head hurts.

“Owww,” Snipes go. Cause he’s through.

He lays there for a minute then pulls himself out of me and gets out the car. He closes up his pants while he looks down the road. Zipper then belt. In my head I can see all the little seeds he just sowed in me. All them little Snipeses running up inside me looking for somewheres to plant. But there’s a baby up in me already, a Baby Snipes. Baby Snipes knocks down the Little Snipes Seeds as fast as they come up.

“How you doing?” Snipes asks.

“Mmokay.”

I turn from my side onto my back, raising up on both elbows. My housedress is all open and the baby makes a hump. Snipes turns to look at me, his gold-colored eyes staying on mines, seeing the hump without really seeing it. He ducks into the front seat, getting his Chesterfields out his shirt pocket, and standing there with his back to me, smoking in just his undershirt.

“Penny for yr thoughts,” I go but he don’t turn around or say nothing. I sit up, buckling my bra and taking a look around for my panties, first in the front seat then running my hand between the backseat and the seat back, thinking my panties mighta got stuck in between but not finding nothing. Then I do feel a scrap of something and give it a yank. Big red shiny drawers. Not mines. Snipes turns around and sees me holding them.

“My sister’s,” he says smiling and putting on his shirt. “I let her use my car sometimes.”

I stuff the drawers back where I found them, first leaving a little red tail sticking out, then stuffing them back in all the way.

“I didn’t know you had no sister,” I says. “I don’t know nothing about you.”

“Whatchu need to know?” he says.

“What’s her name?”

“Who?”

“Yr sister.”

“Alberta,” he says. Then he turns away showing me the side of his face, shaved clean and right-angled as my elbow. He’s smiling hard, but not at me.

“Clifton, can I ask you something else?”

“I’ll get you some more panties, girl, don’t worry,” he says.

An hour ago, when Snipes came to get me, I was doing Aunt June’s hair. I heard his whistle. He weren’t stopped at the pumps. He was stopped across the road, standing against his car looking cool, waiting for me to come outside but waiting cool, just in case I didn’t show. I seen him and run across the road without even looking to see if cars was coming and he picked me up and swirled me around. Just like Harry Belafonte woulda.

“You ain’t been around in almost a month,” I said, breathless from the swirling.

“I been working, girl,” he said. He got a custom-coffin business. He makes and sells handmade coffins in any shape you want with plush lining inside and everything. While we drove he showed me his sample book with three new photographs, proud, like folks show pictures of they children. A oak Cadillac, a guitar of cherry wood, and a pharaoh-style one too, all big enough to get buried inside, the new ones not painted yet so folks can pick out they own colors.

“People been talking,” I said.

“What they saying?”

“Stuff,” I said. “They saying stuff.” We kissed as we drove down the road and then I started laughing cause he was tickling me and getting me undressed and showing me his sample book and driving all at the same time. His left hand on the wheel, his right hand between my legs. Then we pulled off the road. Then we did it. Now we done.

“I’ll get you a whole damn carload full of panties, girl,” he says. “Them panties you had on is probably along the side of the road somewhere between here and Lincoln.” He smiles and I smile with him. I remember taking them off. The wind was whipping and musta whipped them out the window while we drove. But that was an hour ago.

Now I look down the road, seeing if I can see them. I see somebody down there walking in the dirt and the shimmer from the heat.

“I don’t wanna go home without no panties,” I says.

“You worry too much,” Snipes says.

All the car doors are open and the wind goes through, drying the sweat off the seats.

“I gotta know something,” I says.

“Whut?”

“The man’s supposed to ask the girl,” I whisper. He don’t speak.

We been together since March. Now it’s July. I wanna give him a chance to ask me.

“You said I wouldn’t get bigged the first time we did it,” I says.

“Was our first time your first time?” he says.

“You gonna marry me or what?” I says. The words come out too loud.

He don’t speak. He cuts on the radio but it don’t work when the car ain’t running. He gets out, closing the back two doors, leaving mines open and getting back behind the wheel.

“Sure I’m gonna marry you,” he says at last. “You my treasure. You think I don’t wanna marry my treasure?”

“People are talking,” I says.

“They just jealous,” he says and we both laugh. “Billy Beede got herself a good-looking man and they all jealous.”

When we quit laughing we sit there quiet.

“You my treasure, girl,” he says. “You my treasure, capital T, make no mistake.”

“I’m five months gone,” I says. Too loud again.

He wraps his fingers tight around the wheel. I want him to look at me but he don’t.

Someone comes up, stopping a foot or two from the car to stare at us openmouthed. It’s Laz. He got his wool cap down around his ears and his plaid shirt buttoned to the chin.

“You want yr ass kicked?” Snipes asks him.

“Not today,” Laz says.

“You don’t stop looking at me and my woman, I’ma kick yr black ass,” Snipes says.

Laz looks at the ground.

“You don’t get the hell outa here, I’ma kill you,” Snipes says.

“Being dead don’t bother me none,” Laz says. He got a bold voice but he ain’t looking up from the ground.

Snipes jumps out the car and they stand there toe to toe. Everything Snipes got is better than everything Laz got.

“Go the hell home, Laz,” I says and he turns and goes. Snipes throws a rock and Laz runs.

“Goddamn boot-black-wool-hat-wearing-four-eyed nigger probably wanted to see us doing it,” Snipes goes, getting back in the car and laughing and holding my hand. “Peeping and creeping boot-black-winter-hat nigger.”

“Laz is just Laz,” I says.

“His daddy runs the funeral home but Laz ain’t never gonna be running shit,” Snipes says, laughing hard and squeezing my hand to get me to laugh too and I laugh till his squeezing hurts and I make him let go.

“Today’s Wednesday, ain’t it?” Snipes says. He looks down the road, seeing his upcoming appointments in his head. “I’m free towards the end of the week. Let’s get married on Friday.”

“Really?”

“Friday’s the day,” he says, taking out his billfold. He peeks the money part open with his pointer and thumb, then he feathers the bills, counting. His one eyebrow lifts up, surprised.

“That’s what you call significant,” he says.

“Significant?”

“What year is it?”

“ ‘Sixty-three.”

“And here I got sixty-three dollars in my billfold,” he says smiling.

He pinches the bills out, folding them single-handed. He reaches over to me, lifting my housedress away from my brassiere and tucking the sixty-three dollars down between my breasts.

“Get yrself a wedding dress and some shoes and a one-way bus ticket.”

“I’ma go to Jackson’s Formal.”

“Get something pretty. Come up to Texhoma tomorrow. We can do it Friday.”

“You gonna get down on yr knee and ask me?”

“You come up tomorrow and I’ll get down on my knee in front of my sister and her kids and ask you to marry me. Hell, I’ll get down on both knees. Then we can do it Friday.”

“How bout today you meet Aunt June and Uncle Teddy?” I says.

“Today I gotta go to Midland,” he says.

“It’ll only take a minute.”

“I don’t got a minute,” he says. He looks at me. He got lips like pillows. “Have em come to Texhoma Friday. They can watch us get married. I’ll meet em then.”

“When they come up you gotta ask me to marry you on yr knees in front of them too,” I says. “They’d feel left out if they didn’t see it since you’ll be asking me in front of yr sister and her kids and yr mother and dad—”

“My mother and dad won’t be making it,” Snipes says.

“How come?”

“They’s passed,” he says. He starts up the car, turning it around neatly and pulling it into the road, heading back towards Lincoln. On Friday my new name will be Mrs. Clifton Snipes.

“I was ten when Willa Mae passed,” I says.

“Willa Mae who?”

“Willa Mae Beede. My mother,” I says.

Snipes takes his hand off the wheel to scratch his crotch. His foot is light on the gas pedal. There’s a story about my mother. All these months I been seeing Snipes, I didn’t know whether or not he’d heard it. Now I can tell he has.

“They say yr mamma went into the ground with gold in her pockets,” Snipes says.

“You believe that?” I says.

“I’m just telling you what they say.”

“And I say Willa Mae Beede was a liar and a cheat. Getting locked up in jail every time she turned around. Always talking big and never amounting to nothing.”

He takes his foot all the way off the gas to look me full in the face. We coast along. “She was your mamma, girl,” Snipes says.

“Willa Mae passed and it didn’t bother me none. I was glad to see her go,” I says.

“How come you call her Willa Mae?”

“Willa Mae is her name,” I says.

He turns his eyes back to the road and we pick up speed. We go fast. The hot air swishes through the car with all the windows down. I put my hands on the sides of my head, keeping my hair in some kind of shape.

“Willa Mae’s pockets of gold ain’t nothing to sneeze at,” Snipes says. He sorta yells it over the loud whoosh of the air.

“Shoot, Snipes,” I says. “Willa Mae Beede was the biggest liar in Texas. She didn’t go into the ground with shit.” I feel mad then I laugh. After a minute Snipes laughs too.

“Any jewels she had was fake,” I tell him.

“It makes a good story,” he says.

“A good story’s all it makes.”

He checks his wristwatch. We come up on the road that leads to the Crater and he pulls over.

“I gotta let you out here.”

“Can’t you take me all the way home?”

“I gotta get to Midland.”

Sanderson’s is only a mile away. I can walk.

“Penny for your thoughts,” I says.

“Nothing on my mind but coffins,” he says smiling, looking down the road, hands easy now, two fingers of each balanced on the wheel. “Doctor Wells is dying. I’ma talk him into getting buried in a black doctor’s bag made outa oak.”

“That sounds nice,” I says.

His arm grazes my belly as he reaches over to open my door for me. I get out then lean through the window so he can give me some sugar. My dress gaps open. He looks quick at his sixty-three dollars.

“We getting married on Friday, Billy Beede!” Snipes hollers, taking off, driving north, waving at me as he goes.

I walk home the other way.

Snipes

I don’t know how the hell I get into these messes.

This mess I’m in now started with me needing three dollars’ worth of gas and a Coke. Just goes to show.

“That’s a nice car you got,” she said. “What’s it called?”

“It’s a Galaxie.”

“Like the stars and stuff?”

“It’s just a Ford, girl,” I said. I was on my way home. It was getting late. The man who’d sold me the gas had gone inside through the filling station and into what looked like a trailer out back. The girl was lingering.

“You like cars dontcha?” I said.

“Not really,” she said.

“You wanna go for a ride?” I ast her.

“It’s late,” she said.

“Maybe some other time then,” I said. And I went on.

But I came back the next day. Don’t ask me why cause I don’t know. Billy Beede got a good head of hair and a nice smile tho there’s plenty of gals with that. I heard folks say her mamma died rich, but I didn’t have no designs or nothing on her money. I was just headed back to see her.

“You wanna go for a ride?”

“I’m supposed to be watching the place. My aunt and uncle’s getting groceries in town.”.

“We’ll only go down the road,” I said. And we went.

I thought it would be hard to get her. But it was easy. Right on the side of the road the first time and on the side of the road, every other week or so after that, whether I had business in Lincoln or not. From March until today. The first time I went slow. I told her I loved her and that she didn’t need to worry about nothing cause couldn’t nothing happen the first time.

She only told me a few things about herself—that she had a talent for hair and used to do hair in town. I kept my cards close to my chest too. I only talked coffins. I coulda tolt her how I got a mother and father living in Dallas. I coulda tolt her that. I coulda tolt her other things. But I wasn’t wanting to let too much of my life loose cause letting yr life loose can turn a good time bad. Just goes to show, cause now the little bits of my life I done let loose at her has gone and made a mess.

Maybe Doctor Wells will go for my doctor-bag coffin. He wants to go out in style and I’ll give him a good price.

I’ma have to cross Lincoln off my list. It don’t bother me. Jackson’s Funeral ain’t never gonna buy nothing from me no way. Still.

Shit.

I don’t know how I get into these messes.

Laz Jackson

I wished I coulda caught them doing it. If I coulda caught them doing it, then my anger woulda come up and I woulda tolt Snipes that Billy Beede belongs to me and I woulda been so mad I mighta maybe kilt him. I seen them in the car. I got all the way up to the windows without them seeing me. But they was through doing it already and when I seen them sitting there I didn’t feel mad I just felt sick.

Now I can hear Billy walking in her shoes. Clop clop. Like a horse. Walking down the road. I’m laying flat on my back. Flat on the ground and right alongside the road. I got my hands acrosst my chest, I’m all laid out to rest. When she walks by she’s gonna pay her respects. She’ll have to.

“I’m getting married on Friday,” she yells out to everybody, to no one. “Billy Beede’s marrying Clifton Snipes!” It would be nice if she yelled out how she was gonna be marrying Laz Jackson.

Now I don’t hear nothing. No more clopping.

I could get up but don’t. Billy’s on her way towards me and I’m gonna lay here till she passes by. Her man left her on the side of the road and now she’s walking home. But I don’t hear no more clopping. She got off the road and is walking in the dirt or she took her shoes off and her feet on the hot ground must be burning up pretty good about now.

I can smell her coming: 12 Roses Perfume, sweat, hair grease and something else. A thick smell: the smell of almost-milk. Now her smell is right on top of me. Pressing down against my smell of sweat from running from the rock Snipes threw. He hit me on the back of the head. It hurt but it ain’t bleeding. I keep my eyes shut but I know Billy’s standing right above me looking.

“Whut the hell you laying there for?” Billy goes.

“I’m dead,” I go.

“No you ain’t,” she goes.

“Am too,” I go. “Laz Jackson is dead and you oughta be crying.”

“If you dead how come you running yr mouth?” she goes.

I open my eyes looking up at her. In one hand she’s holding her shoes, pink-colored pumps against her blue housedress. Her other hand’s holding her dress tight to her leg so the wind don’t lift it up.

“Your feet hurt?”

“No,” she says.

“They look like they hurt,” I says.

She bends down, putting her shoes back on, her eyes holding on to mines, making sure I don’t look up her skinny black legs and see nothing. She stands on one leg while she puts the first shoe on, then, balancing hard, she puts on the other shoe.

“I’m getting married Friday,” she says.

“To me?”

“Hells no,” she says. Then she looks to Midland. “Clifton and me been planning our wedding for months now.” She says it loud, like she’s saying it to me and to Snipes too.

I sit up, rising from the dead. If I had me a car and was sitting in it, the way I’m sitting would be towards Midland. My car’d be faster than his, as black as his is yellow. I’d go down there and run him off the road. Who bigged you? I wanna ask Billy but I know who: the one she calls Clifton Snipes.

“You think yr mamma’ll give me a good price on a dress?” Billy asks me.

“You gotta ask her yrself,” I says.

She looks down the road, towards Midland again, then she looks towards Sanderson’s filling station where her and her aunt and uncle stay at. They run the filling station and live in a mobile home out back. Sanderson’s ain’t theirs though, they just run it.

She starts walking, in her shoes again. Clop clop clop clop. I get up and walk after her. I seen up her smock. Where yr panties at? I ask her. Not out loud, just in my head.

“I was reading in the Encyclopaedia Britannica that there’s more dead in the world than there is living,” I says out loud.

“So whut,” Billy says.

We come up on the station. Four hundred yards. She throws her shoulders back and lifts up her chin. Someone on the porch, her Uncle Roosevelt, is standing there with Dill Smiles. They wave at us but Billy don’t wave back.

“There’s more Negro in the world than there is white,” I go but she ain’t listening.

“I want that wedding dress your mamma’s got in the window. The one with the train,” she says.

“That dress is high.”

“Snipes is paying for it. He gived me enough money to get any dress I want. Plus shoes.”

“Mamma closes up around five,” I says.

She glances up at the sky. It’s after four.

“Shit,” she goes and takes off running towards the filling station, as fast as her shoes and belly lets her, one hand still tight down at her hem, the other hand balled in a fist and working like a piston.

I keep walking, taking my time, looking at the sun, at the dirt, towards Midland, towards Sanderson’s. My fly is buttoned wrong. I button it right. My glasses are dirty. I clean them. Without my glasses on everything is a blur like I’m standing still and the world is moving. I got six different suits. Snipes, he got one or two but don’t never wear them together at the same time. He comes around every month to show my daddy his sample book and him and my daddy talk. It’s always the same.

“We don’t know nobody who wants to be buried in no coffin that looks like a banana,” my daddy tells Snipes.

“I got an appointment with Doctor Wells over in Midland. Doctor Wells says he’d like to be buried in a doctor’s bag,” Snipes says. “And look here, I got Cadillacs, guitars, Egyptian styles, and this here’s an airplane,” Snipes goes, turning his picture pages. “I made each one myself,” he says.

My daddy can’t be moved. “Jackson’s Funeral Home ain’t the most respected in Butler County for nothing. White or black, we the most respected. You seen the sign out front. ‘Established in 1926.’ We’ll be fifty years come ’Seventy-six,” Daddy tells him.

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.