Ashes (9 page)

She doesn't look much like me. Except for the
eyes. Sometimes I'll look into those black glass eyes of hers, the
eyes that seem to soak up whatever light hits them. Then I'll run
into the bathroom down the hall, quick before I forget, and look in
the mirror at my own eyes. And for just a second, or however long I
can go without blinking, I can pretend that I'm pretty like Sung
Li.

You really think I'm pretty? Well, it's nice
of you to say that, anyway. But I'm not pretty like Sung Li.

At night in bed I wrap the blankets around me
and think about Sung Li. I take off my pillowcases and put them on
my arms and pretend they're big sleeves. I stick my lips out a
little, like I'm waiting for a secret kiss. I pretend I'm sitting
on the middle shelf and people look at me and like me because I am
pretty and have good value.

Maybe I wouldn't ever have learned Sung Li's
story. But one day Daddy opened the case with his little key
because he bought a carved gnome and wanted to put it in there. Mom
was watching him, to make sure he didn't break anything. Daddy used
to break things sometimes.

No, I don't need a tissue. Everybody keeps
telling me that it's okay to cry, and they give me candy bars. But
why should I cry? Sung Li is going to be okay.

Usually Mom sent me away whenever the case
was opened. I think she was afraid I would pick up something and
make its value go down. So I hid behind the door and looked through
that crack near the hinges. I heard Daddy tell Mom that the gnome
was a collector's item. It was an ugly old thing, with a thick
beard and a sharp nose and a face that's all wrinkly like somebody
who stayed in the bathtub too long. You can see it when you go up
to look at Sung Li, if you want to.

Daddy took Sung Li out of the center space on
the main shelf and put that knotty old gnome in her place. He put
Sung Li on the bottom shelf and leaned her against my baby shoes.
They're bronze now. They weren't bronze when I wore them.

I knew Sung Li was mad about being moved,
maybe just because Daddy had touched her. Her eyes burned with all
that light they had soaked up over the years. But Daddy didn't
notice, he just hummed his little hum and tilted his head back to
make sure the gnome was centered on the shelf. Then he closed the
door and I saw Mom hide the key under the showcase.

After they were gone, I tiptoed to the case
and felt under the bottom edge until I found the key. I heard the
front door slam and then heard Daddy start his car and drive away,
back to work or wherever he stayed all day until dark. Mom was
messing with the laundry downstairs. I put the key in the lock and
turned it. The whole front of the case opened up, and it squeaked
like a door in a haunted house.

I reached out to touch Sung Li, and my hand
was trembling. She was so pretty, even when she was mad about being
moved. Her lips were shining in the little bit of sunshine. Then I
couldn't help myself, I had to feel her smooth skin, even if it
meant her value would go down and Mom would be mad at me. I touched
her secret lips and they were cold, cold like a popsicle, cold like
the sidewalk in winter when you lay the back of your head against
it.

I felt her soft black hair that was smoothed
behind her head. I touched her robe with all its folds and tiny
stitches. I rubbed that little pinch of a nose. I picked her
up.

I thought she would be made out of that hard
stuff they make plates out of. But only her head was. The rest must
have been stuffed with rags or cotton or something like that. When
I picked her up with my hand around her skinny waist, her head
flopped over and banged against the bronze shoes. The showcase
rattled and I was afraid Mom would hear it even over the noise of
the washer.

I quick put my hand around Sung Li's head. I
felt a sharp pain. I pulled my fingers out from under her hair and
there was blood on them. Her head had cracked.

My heart must have skipped at least two
beats. I was afraid Mom would be mad because Sung Li's value had
gone down and Daddy would give me one of his special spankings. And
I was afraid that Sung Li wouldn't love me after that.

Isn't that funny, how you love somebody but
you end up breaking them?

But Sung Li's eyes weren't mad anymore. They
just looked off over my shoulder and soaked up the sunshine. That's
when I heard Mom coming up the stairs. I leaned Sung Li back
against the bronze shoes and closed the case.

I think I was breathing again by then because
I could see fog on the glass. I put the key back in its hiding
place, and that's when I remembered that I hadn't locked the case.
But I thought maybe I could do that later, if Mom didn't notice
that I'd messed with anything. It almost looked exactly the same as
before. The crack in Sung Li's head was hidden by her hair.

But one thing I knew Mom would notice. The
dust on the shelves. Daddy had been real careful when he set Sung
Li there on the lower shelf. But I was in such a hurry to pick her
up, I had wiped a clean trail where Sung Li's robe had brushed
across the wood. And one thing I had learned from watching dust
settle all those times, you just can't hurry dust.

My tummy felt like it had a stone in it. When
Mom reached the hall, she asked me why I was so pale. She said I
was as white as a China doll. She felt my forehead and said I might
be getting a fever. She was so worried that she forgot to look in
the case.

She tucked me in and then Daddy came later
and tucked me in twice. After he left, I stared up at the ceiling
in the dark and thought I could see Sung Li's eyes. Even when I
thought I was asleep, I still saw those eyes. And my head hurt. And
the eyes got bigger and bigger until they filled up everything. And
then it was like I was looking through Sung Li's eyes. You know how
you get a fever and things get mixed up?

That's how I was feeling. How could my eyes
feel cold and glassy and big like that when I was asleep? But all I
know is that Sung Li wanted me to look through her eyes.

Sung Li saw the edge of the shelf, she felt
the cold of the bronze shoes against her back. But the robe was
soft and snug around her body, the sleeves as loose as pillowcases.
She stretched out and then she was standing, raising up on those
wiggly legs and walking to the glass door.

She tripped over an ivory elephant that came
up to her knees. The elephant fell over and landed on some of Uncle
Theodore's army medals. The noise was so loud, it would have woken
me up if I hadn't been dreaming so heavily. Then Sung Li crawled
over a toy metal train that was old and rusty. Curly flakes of
paint stuck to her robe.

She pushed open the glass door to the
showcase and jumped to the floor with something from the shelf,
something that was dark. She landed on her little shoes, her head
flopping up and down because it was so heavy. In my sleep, I heard
a thumping and scratching down the hall, at my parents' door. Or
maybe I was awake, because a dog was barking somewhere down the
street.

Then I heard Daddy's breathing, sort of long
and loud, not the short and fast way it gets on Mom's library
nights. Sung Li felt the edge of the blanket that was hanging down
to the floor. She pulled herself up, the volcano knife tucked under
her arm, and the next thing I knew she was on Daddy's chest and
rocking up and down like a boat on the ocean.

I don't know what happened after that, only I
heard Mom screaming and I think I woke up and I was glad it was
only a dream because I was scared. But Mom kept screaming and
screaming, then I knew I was awake because my finger hurt where I
had cut it.

I cut it on the crack in Sung Li's head, just
like I told you. Not on the volcano knife. I never touched the
volcano knife.

Anyway, Mom screamed and then my head was
hurting again. I went down the hall and looked in their bedroom.
Mom was sitting up in bed, her face all pink and she screamed some
more. I guess somebody finally heard her and called the police.

The police I talked to before asked why I had
blood all over my clothes. I told him it was because I tried to get
Mom off the bed, away from what happened to Daddy. Maybe you don't
believe me, either, and you'll make me keep telling Sung Li's story
over and over, and about those library nights, and how my finger
got cut.

But just go upstairs and look in the
showcase. Then maybe you'll quit looking at me like I'm an
afterthought. You'll see two things right off. I know, because I
did, and I'm only a kid.

First, you'll see Sung Li right back in her
old place in the center of the shelf, staring out with those cold
glass eyes that aren't really glass at all, only that stuff they
make plates out of. The ugly gnome is down on the bottom shelf, its
face all chipped and scarred like the woodcarver got mad at the
thing he was making.

And there's one other thing, something Sung
Li couldn't cover up. I don't know how she got the blood off her
clothes. And she somehow got the ivory elephant back in place and
wiped off the knife that's made of volcano stuff. The knife's gone
now. One of those other police took it away in a plastic bag.

But look on the shelf, and the second shelf,
too. You'll see what gives her away. What she left behind on her
way back to her old place in the showcase. Two little rows of dots
in the dust, about the size of the ends of somebody's fingers.

Footprints. She couldn't fix that, and I know
why.

I hid behind the door enough times to know
that you just can't hurry dust.

Can we go see Sung Li now?

###

IN THE FAMILY

"How could you even think of selling it?"
Gaines breathed on a brass rail and polished it with his jacket
sleeve.

Mother should be proud, Gaines thought. But
her pride was in a new luxury sedan, twice-yearly trips to the
Mediterranean, face-lifts. All fleeting, mortal things. If only she
had more of the Wadell blood in her. Then she would find joy in the
only things that truly last: a proper memorial, a professional
embalming job, a final show of respect.

"I put up with it long
enough because of your father. And now that he's gone, there's no
reason to hang around this—this
mausoleum
." Mother's hair was stiff
from a forty-dollar frosting job at her hairdresser's. It didn't
shift as she wrung her hands and rolled her eyes in another of her
classic "spells."

"We've invested so much in the Home," Gaines
said. "But this isn't about money. This is about tradition."

"Tradition, my foot. Your grandfather was a
drunkard and a fool. He started the business because this was the
only one that couldn't possibly fail. And your father was just like
him. Only he had the sense to marry somebody with a good head for
business."

"And business has never been better," Gaines
said. "So why sell now?"

"Why? Because I've given
enough of my life to the Wadell Funeral Home. I've had it up
to
here
—" she put a
hand to her surgically-tucked and shiny chin,"—with death and
dying. And there you go, wasting a quarter grand on
remodeling."

Gaines looked around the parlor. The brooding
red pine paneling was gone, the walls now covered with
clear-varnished oak. Strip spotlights hung in place of the
fluorescent tubes that had once vomited their weak green light.
Purple velvet drapes hung from the windows, in thick folds of the
regal splendor that the guests of honor so richly deserved. On a
raised platform at the rear of the room, soft light bathed the bier
where the guests received their final tribute.

The sinking sun pried its way through the
front glass, suffusing the bleached woodwork of the dais with a
red-golden light. No dust gathered on the plush cushioning he had
added to the straight-backed pews. The room smelled of wax and
rosewater, incense and carnations. Not the slightest aroma of
decaying flesh was allowed in the parlor area.

This had been a place of peace. But lately it
was a place for the same argument again and again.

"Mother, please be reasonable," Gaines said.
"I know Father left you the Home in his will, but he told both of
us a hundred times that he wanted me to carry on the business. It’s
the only thing he really felt passion for."

“
That’s the truth.” She
shook her head slowly, and in the soft light, she looked about half
of her sixty-eight years. "I’m not doing this just for me. Though,
Lord knows, I'm ready for a change. It's mostly for
you."

"Me?"

"You think I want my only son to spend his
life up to his elbows in the guts of corpses? Do you want to go
home every night and take two long showers, but no matter how hard
you scrub, the smell stays with you? It's in the food you eat, the
air you breathe, it's in the water you drink, it's in your blood.
And I want to save you from that."

In your
blood
. That's what Mother didn't
understand. The funeral parlor was more than a family business. It
was a duty, a sacred trust. "You can't sell it," he
said.

"Oh, I can't? You just watch." Mother stamped
her two-inch heel onto the parquet floor and bustled from the
room.

Gaines heard the side door slam as Mother
left the parlor. Warmth crept up his face, a rush of emotion that
no good interment man should allow to show. He couldn't lose his
temper. Not with Stony Hampton's viewing a half-hour away.

He could be angry at Mother, but not at
Stony's expense. Stony was a much-beloved member of the community
and a top-notch mechanic. Sure, he'd had a fondness for moonshine
and the cigarettes that had eventually stifled his lungs, and maybe
he'd slapped his kids around a little, but all that was forgiven
now, at least until the man was in the ground. For a few days, from
the hour of death to service to burial, even the lowest scoundrel
was a saint.