Are You Sitting Down? (3 page)

It
wasn’t
my fault.

Standing in the cemetery on that last day of summer, Mr. Black had looked so uncomfortable in the black suit he’d outgrown.
It was probably the same suit he’d worn to his we
d
ding years
before
.
Tufts on the shoulders left from the hanger told me he’d slipped it on right from
storage
.
A
faint
brownish-gray ring of dust encircled the collar, where it had been left e
x
posed outside the garment bag in the attic or in the back of his closet
untouched
for
so many
years.
I remember his face was pale and blotchy, like someone had kicked him really hard.

The cool wind that rustled the first autumn leaves from the trees blew Mrs. Black’s handkerchief from her hand.
It
fli
t
ted through the air like a white downy feather then
landed in the hole in the ground there between us
, slipping off Justin’s coffin and disappearing in the fresh dirt beneath
.
Everyone looked at her for a response.
Mr. Black touched her arm and she gave a nod to just leave it.
She buried her face in his side and
cried
out.
Everyone winced with sorrow.
I was accustomed to the sound of her
weeping
since I’d heard
a lot of it
for more than two days now, but one never becomes comfortable with the sound of a mother’s pain.
Lorraine
, my own mother, took my hand in hers without looking at me.
She felt my pain too.

I didn’t mean to distance myself from them after that.
It wasn’t intentional.
With Justin gone, I also needed to mourn and then find a way to fill th
e
empty void in my life where he had been.
After spending nearly ten years of your life with someone, a part of you dies with them
or just goes missing.
There are no pictures of broken hearts or
your
sanity on the back of milk cartons like the
ones
of lost children they once put there.

Justin had been quite remote with his parents.
He didn’t visit them as often as I visited mine.
He took his reasons to the grave.
I figured his parents blamed me, but they always hugged my neck when we did go to see them.
Inside my head, I ima
g
ined it was just his mother being hospitable.
In her head, she probably gritted her teeth and loathed the day Justin had met me. And
Justin always made me go
with him to see them
.
He never wanted t
ime
alone
with his family
.

And now that he was gone, I couldn’t be there for them.
I couldn’t answer their questions or be the last living entity to connect them to their son.
When he was living, the
ir
house was a shrine to him.
School photos from every year
decorat
ed the walls in numerical order. The trophies he’d won running track or playing piano recitals still adorned the mantel. I had my ph
o
tos and souvenirs too, now tucked away for rainy days.
I knew Justin would understand.
It was easier to think his parents d
e
spised me because I knew their son better than they did.

That was two summers ago
when I
lost my lover and my best friend, and without even knowing it, I lost a part of my childhood too.
Sy the goat.

“Is your mother having a big dinner tonight?”
Mr. Black asked.

“Yes sir, the whole family should be there.
It’s the first time in a long time
since Pop died
.”

“Your brother
s
and sisters?”

“Yep, all f
ive
of us
.”

“Justin always wanted a sibling,” Mr. Black said.
The glazy look in his eyes told me he was fading away to grab hold of some distant recollection of a better day.

“What about you and Mrs. Black?
Any plans for Christmas?”
I asked, changing the subject
to
bring him back.

“No plans.
Just us.
If you find the time, please come by and see us.
Will you?”
He pleaded.

“I’ll certainly try,” I said looking away
to avoid the hope in his eyes
.
I glanced at my car and then looked down the long empty stretch of highway like a weary traveler with miles to go
, but m
y mother lived within walking distance
from Greer’s
.

“Tell your mother Merry Christmas from
the Blacks
.”

Justin had always hated their last name, mainly because in a small town like Ruby Dregs “the blacks” was also used to reference the African Americans who
mainly
lived on
Forrest Avenue
.
There were no colored people living in Dogwood, but when a family
of them
showed up one
morning
at the Baptist church because the preacher had invited them
,
“
t
he blacks are here” is what everyone whispered in Sunday
school
.
Justin once told me a wooden plaque reading “The Blacks” hung on the side of their home below the mailbox till he conveniently buried it in the backyard one summer while in grade school.
His father had blamed “the blacks” for stealing it.

With my last name being White, it didn’t help much.
It never made Justin mad but it was good material for a joke whenever he started talking about it.
“Whites and Blacks shouldn’t date one another,” he’d say in a twangy voice while imitating his mother.
We never put our name on the outside of the house though because Mom would have thought a sign reading “The Whites” was tacky.
I’d have to agree with her.

Mr. Black
shook my hand
after
opening his car door.
I stepped back and got into my own car and watched him disa
p
pear inside the grocery.
He had always been a big man, but it looked like he’d put on even more weight.
Walking looked t
e
dious, and he had to steady himself against the door handle just to climb the three small steps to get inside.

The sweet smell of the ham and turkey lingered
in the car
, reminding me of home.
I was glad I was almost there.
I closed my eyes tight to erase the thought of tears.
Fishing my keys out of my pocket
, I hurriedly started the car to drive away before Mr. Black came out.

*
*
*
*

My mother’s entire yard was a garden.
It disappeared in the winter beneath the South’s heavy ice and snow, but grew back almost effortlessly every spring.
Mother pampered large ferns, poppies, roses, lilies, daffodils, and every kind of
bloom
imaginable as long as the warm weather would let her
.
T
he month of December sprouted a garden of lights and plastic
Christmas people
.
A life-size Santa waved to passersby where the birdbath had been.
Neon blue i
cicle lights hung from the gutters.
A plastic baby Jesus lay in the rose bed with an ento
u
rage of colorful nativity characters that all lit up at night.
With the Christ child in one corner and ole Saint Nick in the other, Justin had laughed at the Las Vegas-like menagerie the first time he saw it.

“Is
Lorraine
a Baptist or a Methodist?”
h
e asked.

“
Which has the better bake sale?
” I replied.

Justin had always called my mother by her first name.
She never corrected him.
She was
Lorraine
to all of her old friends in town.
I liked the idea that he was an old friend too.
There was a time long ago when she would not have been so accep
t
ing of him because she was not accepting of me
, but I had yet to meet Justin back then
.
Few boyfriends graced the White family holidays until Mom asked me once if I’d like to bring someone
along
.

“I’m afraid the family might scare them away,” I joked, but I was secretly glad she had asked.

My younger brother brought a different girl every year
, and no one ever asked twice what happened to the last one.
It seemed to be routine, and expected, that he never dated the same girl for more than a year
.
My older brother and sister were both married.
Even my younger sister had a steady bo
y
friend in high school that ate dinner with us on
ce
.
I was tired of appearing to be the
only
single man at the family table.
I was tired of having to forget about my
special
someone for a day, kissing them good-bye
before the 150 mile journey back home, exchanging gifts with them the night before or the day after.

I indeed had my own personal life
, and then there was my
family
. B
ut I was old enough now that I was ready for both of them to stop being so personal
and separate
.
Thanks to my Mom, they converged.
There was Robert that first year, then Rodney the next.
(At first, I seemed to have developed my younger brother’s dating habits.)
Billy was only a friend I i
n
vited who otherwise would have spent Christmas alone
that year
, but Mom insisted on asking how he was doing every time we spoke on the phone for a while after.
Then, I met Justin.