An Elderberry Fall (28 page)

I vividly remember the awful day when Papa was summoned to die. It was around two o'clock in the afternoon. The thermometer hanging over the kitchen door read ninety-five degrees, and the gray cotton dress I was wearing clung to my back like molasses to a pancake. Momma sat at the kitchen table gazing blankly out the window. The lines in her face were forged by misfortune and her round chestnut-colored eyes were cloudy with sad tears that trickled down her cocoa cheeks. She blotted her eyes with her hanky, but they continued to leak like a river that had long overflowed.

“Y'all come on in and sit down,” she mumbled in a voice so muted I
hardly recognized it.

My brothers and I each pulled out a chair and sat down. We were not used to seeing her so broken. Usually she was on her feet handing out orders.

“Why are you crying? What's wrong with ya, Momma?” Carl asked, patting her gently on the shoulder.

Her lips trembled as she said softly, “It's your papa. He done took sick. He been complaining of a headache and now his lips are twisted to one side. He can't even stand up. He ain't doing good.”

We glanced at each other with puzzled frowns and waited for someone to figure out what to do. But nobody did.

“What can we do?” Carl asked with the same authority my papa would have used if he'd been feeling well.

“Be there for him, he's gonna need you,” Momma said.

When I saw Papa lying there in the bed helpless, with his eyes rolled back in his head, tears welled up in my eyes. Papa was a big black man, over six feet five inches tall, and strong as a horse. He never smoked or drank liquor the way most men wished away their troubles, mistresses, or debts. We all believed his mind and his body were solid, too strong to be ravaged by sickness.

Papa had grown up a free man. His daddy had inherited land from his father, given to him by his master, who felt that good service should be rewarded. When the master was fifty years old, dry and nearly dead from pneumonia, he deeded my grandpa some land for all of his hard labor. Yet, even though Papa owned the land, he cut corners every way he could to pay the taxes. Sometimes the profit from his tobacco crop was only enough to break even. He'd help other farmers on Saturday evenings cut down trees or whatever little he could do, all in an effort to make extra cash. He raised pigs, and no matter how many he hung in the smokehouse, our family was only allowed one ham, which was saved and cooked at Christmas.

When I went into his bedroom and saw him lying there, I fell to my knees and began to pray:
Heavenly Father, who's going to take care of us? We need our papa. Please make him well. Amen.

Momma was both frightened and saddened by Papa's illness. During
his sickness, she sat in the rocking chair beside his bed all night and watched him sleep, massaging her temples with the balls of her thumbs and holding her head back while staring at the ceiling, waiting for a sign. Dark circles cast shadows under her big, beautiful eyes. Her hair was frizzled, unattended to, and stuck to one side of her head. Papa was the love of her life even though she never seemed to know how to respond to his affectionate ways, especially the nights when he would stroke her cheeks as they sat close on the porch watching the lightning bugs and counting the stars. She'd ease away from his attention, and he would only shake his head. To see Momma showing her love for Papa now was a clear message to us all: our world was falling apart.

We kept expecting Papa to stand up, stick his big chest out and head right back to the field, anxious to weed the garden, and see if his seeds were sprouting.

Papa moaned and tossed and turned all night, and then when he had enough, he closed his eyes. It was half past four in the afternoon, so hot outside that a drop of water would sizzle if it hit the dry, red dirt. Momma hung her head low and covered her eyes. That's when I knew. I cried until my eyes were swollen almost shut. All I could do was grip her shoulders and hold her tight. A part of me died that day with my papa.

Momma cried out, “I'd seen this day coming. It come to me in my dream the night before it happened; he fell right down in the field, arms pointing east and west, and I couldn't revive him. He was too stubborn to slow down and rest, didn't think anybody could work as hard as he could. I begged him the otha mawnin' to stay inside and he stared me straight in the eyes, put on that ole straw hat and walked out the door. You see, Tuesday was da sun's day. He lay right down in da sun and began to die. Sho nuff did.”

Carl drove the two mules down to Aunt Bessie's to pick her up. We knew that Momma would need the comfort of her sister. I stood in the frame of her bedroom door and watched her take cash out of an old cigar box she kept under her bed. She handed the crumpled money to the rough-looking white man in bib overalls with red dirt glued under his fingernails who'd come from the undertakers. Afterward, he and a
field hand put the casket in the front room and left.

Even before the minister arrived to bless Papa's body, Momma and Bessie went in the kitchen and took out some herbs from the cabinet. They went into the bedroom, where Papa was still lying, washed his body from head to toe, and then rubbed the herbs on him. They dressed him in the only black suit he owned—the one he wore to funerals and church on Sundays.

“Bessie, Lord knows that Robert would want us to be strong, but it's hard,” Momma said, battling back tears. I knew it was tough because crying was a sign of weakness in her mind.

“He looks like he is just sleeping, Mae Lou,” Bessie said, buttoning up Papa's suit jacket and staring down at the corpse.

“He's been struggling all of his life with the mighty sun suffering for a long while, and now God got him, no more fighting.” Momma said as she folded Papa's hands across his wide chest. Papa died only a few days after his thirty-eighth birthday.

Bessie sat down in the high-back chair Papa used to sit in, and she stared Momma right in the eyes. “How you gonna run the farm without a man around?”

“I don't know.”

“You need a man, Mae Lou.”

“Everybody needs a man around, but it ain't right to think about that now.”

“Well, it's hard when ya all alone,” she said, and began to rock as the thought of being alone lingered in the air.

My papa lay in the front room for two days before I decided to talk to him. After everyone went to bed, I lit a candle and took tiny steps down the shadowed gray hallway to his casket, careful not to knock over anything. The floors creaked and the blackness was all over the country at night. Through the window I noticed only a few stars sprinkled across the midnight sky. I reached the front room without anyone hearing me, and the metal hinge in the casket screeched as I opened it. I wasn't afraid of dead people because Momma and Papa said that the dead couldn't hurt you no way.

An eerie feeling crept over me when I glanced down at Papa's stiff
body and leathery skin, sunburned almost black. Tears leaked out the corners of my eyes as I leaned over his corpse and began to speak to him. The candlelight cast my moving shadow on the wall, but I still wasn't afraid. I stood sobbing as droplets of my tears lingered on his burial suit.

“Oh, Papa, I'm going to miss you,” I whispered. “I'm sorry you had to die, and I know this house will not be the same.” I leaned over and kissed his comatose cheek. “I'm going to be okay, though. I'm going to get away from around here and go to college, like you wanted me to do. I promise, I'm going to make you proud.”

I said things to Papa that night that I should have said before he passed. After I finished, I felt relieved. I dried my tears with the back of my hands and went back to my room. Somehow, I knew that he had heard me. I knew that Papa didn't want me to cry for him. Aunt Bessie was right, he looked like he was sleeping, free of all labor and pain, a look of peace permanent on his face.

We grieved for over a week before we buried Papa. If the smell of rotten flesh had not gotten unbearable, he probably would have lain in the front room longer. Members of the New Covenant Baptist Church drove their buggies to our house. Papa was on the board of deacons and everyone respected him. Countless folks brought us fried chicken and ham and potato pies.

The day of the funeral was hard for us. Saying good-bye to my father felt like something I treasured had been ripped away from my arms. The deacons arrived at our house early on that Sunday morning. And like the day he died, the sun stood at attention and peeked at us through the clouds. They loaded Papa's body onto a wagon to take to the church a few miles down the road. When they lifted the casket and slid it onto the wagon, I cried out. I'd felt comforted with his stiff body sleeping in the front room. The deacon with the lazy eye told me to be at peace. I went quiet, but snorted back salty tears all the way to the church.

All during the service, Mr. Camm stood close to Momma as if he knew her and Papa. He even offered her his handkerchief, but she didn't have tears. She looked up at him and he grinned, like a man does
with a pretty woman. He reached over and softly touched her on the arm. She didn't flinch.

Papa was buried in the cemetery behind the church, like most of his family. He was buried a few feet from his mother. His daddy was buried in the slave cemetery on the plantation. My brothers fought back tears all through the service, yet Momma still didn't cry. I suppose she had done all her crying at home.

Momma stood at the foot of his grave for ten minutes after the service was complete. We were the last people to leave the graveyard. We even waited until the deacons and the grave attendant had covered Papa's casket with dirt. Then Carl drove us home.

Nobody said a word. Some of the same people who came with us to the church followed us home to celebrate Papa's home- going.

Mr. Camm came, too, though he shouldn't have been there. I frowned at him, unsettled by his walnut-colored skin and dark, beady eyes set deep in his head. I noticed him peering at me, watching my every move, staring openly without blinking. Words don't do justice to how uncomfortable he made me feel.

He had that effect on a lot of people. It was no wonder that so many people wanted him dead.