Getting Mother’s Body. Suzan-Lori Parks
the news through the envelope.
“You know that letter ain’t to you,” I says.
“The letter’s from Candy and Candy’s my ma,” Dill says.
“It still ain’t to you,” I says.
Dill’s voice gets sharp. “It’s addressed to Billy c/o me but in all these years these letters been coming I ain’t never opened one yet,” Dill says. Dill’s long-legged and coffee-colored with Seminole features and soft hair cut close. Straw hat pulled down low and always wearing mud-speckled overalls and a blue work shirt and brown heavy boots. Dill’s a good head taller than me and a bulldagger. I wouldn’t want to fight her.
“Candy’s probably just asking for payment like she always do,” I says.
“Probably,” Dill says.
I dip some snuff, holding out the tin to Dill after I’ve had mines. Dill don’t dip but I offer it anyway. Dill don’t never ever dip and Dill don’t hardly ever drink. Willa Mae’s buried in Candy’s backyard so Candy writes asking for money to keep up the grave. She sends the letter to us by way of Dill. Candy’s Dill’s mother but she don’t never write Dill nothing.
“Ma could be saying something new this time,” Dill says.
“I doubt it,” I says.
“You never know,” Dill says.
“Sounds like you do know,” I says.
“Yr saying that I opened it,” Dill says. Her left arm goes stiff, with her hand making a fist. She knocked down someone with that fist once. They didn’t get up for two days. My sister. But for what I can’t remember.
“I’m just running my mouth, Dill, I don’t mean to mean nothing,” I says.
She shakes her fist free of whatever made her want to hit me.
“I coulda opened it and read it seeing as how it’s partly addressed to me and I can read. But I ain’t,” Dill says.
“Course you ain’t.”
“I’ll bet you on what it says in here,” Dill says.
“I don’t got shit to bet with,” I says. It’s funny but neither of us laugh.
“Let’s bet you’ll take up preaching again,” Dill says.
I don’t say nothing to that.
We sit there watching Billy turn into a speck as she hurries down the road to Jackson’s Formal. Mrs. Jackson sells dresses and together with her husband Israel they run the Funeral Home too. Laz helps out. When people start they lives they ain’t nothing more than specks. And when Billy came into our life, coming up the road in Dill’s old truck, coming back from LaJunta and the tragedy, she weren’t nothing more than a speck on the road, and then a truck, and then Dill in a truck and then Dill in a truck with little Billy. We thought Billy was gonna live with Dill like her and Willa Mae did when Willa Mae was living, but Dill didn’t want Billy around no more so Billy’s been living with us since she was ten.
“LaJunta, Arizona,” Dill says, reading the postmark. I hold my hand out for the envelope and she hands it to me. A circle with some lines running through it and some marks and a stamp. Below that some marks that say “Miss Billy Beede c/o Dill Smiles, Lincoln, Texas.” But the lines could say “Mr. John F. Kennedy, President of the United States, Warshington, D.C.” for all I know. I never did learn to read. June and Billy read good though. Dill reads pretty good too.
June comes outside. Her crutch tapping the floor like someone’s knocking. She looks at Dill’s truck, a shiny blue Chevrolet, parked off to the side of the pumps.
“That yr new truck, Dill?” June asks.
“Bought it with pig money,” Dill says.
“We could read this now,” I says, fanning the envelope, “it would spark up the day.”
“We’ll wait,” June says. “It’s addressed to Billy so it’s only right to wait for her.”
“Like Billy gives a crap,” Dill says. “She was glad when her mother passed, said so herself.”
“She didn’t mean it,” June says.
“You and Roosevelt don’t got no kids and Billy’s your niece, that’s how come you think that way, but I’m telling you Billy was glad when Willa passed. Billy said ‘good riddance’ and clapped her hands. I was there. I heard and seen it all,” Dill says, retelling us the tragedy.
We sit quiet. If I could give June children I would. If June could give me children she would.
“Candy’s got the grave to keep up plus she runs that motel,” June says.
“How much money you think Candy’s gonna want from us this time?” I ask.
“Do it matter?” Dill says. “You can’t send her none nohow.”
“But we always write her back polite,” June says. “And Candy always finds a way to hold on.”
“She don’t ask me for money cause she knows I won’t send her none and I won’t write her back polite neither,” Dill says.
“The bank’s gonna take her motel one of these days,” I says. I should know. I had a church, a nice church over in Tryler before me and June corned here. It was the most beautiful church you ever seen. And the bank took it.
“Ma always finds a way to hold on,” Dill says.
“Plus she got Even helping out now,” June says. Even is Candy’s daughter. Dill’s sister but by a different daddy.
“Ma always finds a way to make do,” Dill says.
“How come she asking us for payment, then?” June asks.
“She’s what you call resourceful,” Dill says.
June says “huh” to that.
A car comes up, out-of-towners. White. I give them two dollars worth of gas.
“You got a restroom?” the lady asks.
“No, ma’am, we don’t.”
“We shoulda stopped at a Texaco,” the man says. And they go on.
“You all should build a restroom,” Dill says.
June says “huh” to that too. If we could get the money together to build a restroom June would be the one to clean it. It would be Billy’s chore but Billy ain’t as timely at her chores as June is, even though June only got the one leg.
“Ma asked you all for fifty dollars payment last time,” Dill laughs, “this time she’ll probably ask for sixty.”
“Candy can ask all she wants,” June says. “I got a whole dictionary full of words I can say no to her nice with.”
“I know the pain of losing a structure,” I says. When the bank told me they was gonna take my church I went to the bank and got down on my knees.
“I know the pain of losing a structure too,” June says.
We sit there for a while. Not saying nothing. The white out-of-towners leave a cloud of brownish dust in the road.
“It’s worth it, keeping on good terms with Candy, even if we can’t never send her nothing,” I says.
Dill picks up my thought, “You mean cause of the treasure? You mean cause Willa Mae’s buried out there with her pearls and diamonds?”
“No. I was thinking more along the lines of, what with Candy being your mother and you having partly raised Billy some, that makes Candy practically family to us and we should keep on good terms with her,” I says, but I am thinking about the diamonds and whatnot. I can’t help it.
“Yr just thinking