Getting Mother’s Body. Suzan-Lori Parks
down, laying her crutch by her side. There’s a blank space where her leg used to be. I ain’t never seen her with two legs. When I met her she had just the one. Folks say I was smart marrying a woman with one leg cause a woman with one leg ain’t never gonna run off. But I didn’t marry June on account of that. June’s a good woman. Today she’s salty but most days she’s sweet.
“What you think of Billy’s Snipes fella?” Dill asks.
“We ain’t met him yet,” I says. “She says he stays at Texhoma. We should be going up there for the wedding.”
“We should be going to LaJunta and getting Willa Mae’s treasure,” June says.
“Leave my sister in the ground,” I says.
“I ain’t saying take her out the ground,” June says yelling. “I’m just saying take her treasury out the ground.” Then her voice goes soft. “Just enough to get me a leg,” she says.
“You got a point there,” I says. I look at Dill, waiting for her say. Getting at least some of my sister’s treasure has crossed my mind more than once. Dill would tell us how to get there or we could just look at a map. LaJunta’s in Arizona and Candy’s motel is called the Pink Flamingo. That wouldn’t be no trouble. June suggested the very thing about six years ago and Dill told June that if she went treasure-hunting, she would be going against the wishes of the dead. Dill’s the one who heard Willa’s dying wish and Dill’s the one who put Willa in the ground, so to my mind, if Dill don’t give the OK and we was just to go out there and dig, it would be like stealing.
Dill speaks through her teeth. “Yr waiting for me to say go head but I ain’t gonna say it,” she says. “Willa Mae was proud of two things. Her pearl necklace and her diamond ring. Getting buried with them two things was her dying wish. I coulda took them, I coulda stole them from her while she was breathing her last breaths, but I weren’t about to go against her dying wish. So I put her in the ground and I put her jewelry in the ground with her,” Dill says, saying “jewel” and making it sound like “jurl.” “Willa Mae wanted to be buried with her jewels and that’s what she still wants,” Dill says.
“How you know what Willa still wants?” June says.
“She ain’t changing her mind once she’s dead,” Dill says.
“She might,” June says. June reads and knows things.
“I know Willa Mae better than you and I heard her dying wish,” Dill says, making a fist and bringing it down slowly on the arm of her chair. That ends that.
“Dill Smiles, you the most honest person I ever met,” I says.
June says “shit” to that and gets up, with more difficulty than usual, to go clumping back inside.
“You the most honest person I know,” I says again and Dill nods her head in thanks. Dill Smiles don’t open no mail that ain’t addressed to her and Dill Smiles don’t flout no dying wishes of the dead. Dill Smiles is the most honest person I know, even if she ain’t nothing but a bulldagger.
Mrs. Jackson stands beside me. She got a tape measure hanging around her neck and one of them red pincushions, stuck full of steel pins and shaped like a tomato, tied to her wrist. We both looking at the dress in the window, the one with the train. It cost a hundred and thirty dollars.
“How much it cost without the train?” I ask her.
“The train’s on there for good,” she says.
“What if it weren’t?” I says. “How much would it cost if the train weren’t on there for good?”
Mrs. Jackson looks at the dress then at me, sizing me with her eyes. Except for my baby-belly I’m on the narrow side. Her eyes hang on my belly and when I catch her staring, she looks through her front show window and up into the sky. It’s after five o’clock. When I came up she was standing at the door waiting for me. While I was washing up, Laz had told her I was on my way. I wiped the toes of my shoes fast across the backs of my legs, left then right, to get the dirt off. She let me in then turned the “Open” sign to “Closed.”
“I don’t think it’ll fit you,” she says softly.
“It’ll fit,” I says. “But all I got is sixty-three dollars.”
“Mr. Jackson don’t like me spending all my time making these dresses then losing money by selling them cheap,” she says.
“Sixty-three dollars ain’t cheap,” I says. I want to tell her how I’d have more money if her husband woulda bought one of Snipes’ coffins and how, since her husband keeps turning my future husband away, she owes me a deal. I want to say all this but something in me tells me to stay sweet.
“It’s all hand-sewn,” she says. “That’s not a machine-sewn dress and it’s not some dress from the Sears catalogue. That there’s a once-in-a-lifetime dress.”
I see something in her, something I’m not sure of at first. Something my mother might call The Hole. It’s like a soft spot and everybody’s got one. Mother said she could see The Hole in people and then she’d know how to take them. She could see Holes all the time but I ain’t never seen one. Until now. Words shape theirselves in my mouth and I start talking without thinking of what I need to say. It’s like The Hole shapes the words for me and I don’t got to think or nothing.
“When you got married, what’d yr dress look like?” I ask Mrs. Jackson.
The hard line of her mouth lets go a little.
“It musta been pretty,” I says.
“That dress is an exact copy of my wedding dress,” she says smiling. “I was fifteen. One year younger than you are now.” She looks at the dress then back at me then at the dress again.
“You make your dress yrself too?” I ask.
“My mother made mine for me,” Mrs. Jackson says. And then she goes quiet.
The Hole shapes more words in my mouth, all I gotta do is let them out. “Willa Mae, you know, my uh—”
“Your mother,” Mrs. Jackson says, saying “mother” out loud for me.
“Yes, ma’am, well, she’s passed, but she sure woulda loved to see my wedding day, seeing how she was always jilted and never lucky enough to get married herself.”
We stand there quiet, both looking at the dress.
“Let’s see what it looks like on you,” Mrs. Jackson says. She hurries to get a stool then stands on it, pulling down the window shade. I take off my clothes while she strips the dummy. By the time she gets the dress off I’m ready. With the shade down it’s dark inside her store. She can see my baby-belly but not too good. She holds the dress for me and I put my hand on her shoulder and step into it. A row of seed buttons up the back. High collar and long sleeves, blind-you white satin with lots of lace. Plus the long train with a hand loop to hold it off the floor. Be small, baby, I says, talking to my baby without opening my mouth. Be small, baby, be small.
The dress fits.
“Look at you,” Mrs. Jackson says. Her voice is thick like she is about to cry but I can’t tell for sure in the dim light.
I look down at my pink pumps. “I used to wear these when I worked over at Miz Montgomery’s,” I say. “I guess they’ll do.”
“Pink shoes with your wedding dress will not do,” Mrs. Jackson says.
“I can’t afford no nice ones,” I says.
“You wear size 6?” she asks.
“Size 5,” I says.
She goes to the back, walking backwards and turning