By Loretta Gedosh

The Arkansas sun burns hot through my mourning clothes as I walk toward the church. I feel beads of perspiration forming on my neck and running down my back and my pantyhose, bought hastily last night to match my borrowed black dress, are a size too small and pull uncomfortably. Black is not my color. I am an autumn, the woman at the makeup counter had told me years ago. I should never wear black, she said emphatically. It heightens the yellow undertones of my skin. But black is traditional for funerals and my cousin Pearl was kind enough to let me wear one of her dresses. She’s a winter and can wear black, so she has lots of it in her closet, along with bright reds and blues of different shades. I admire her for her looks. “She’s a stunner,” Daddy always said.

Daddy. I walk down the aisle toward the front of the church, and as I approach the casket, I see him lying there. He looks out of place against the blue satin fabric and it provides a bizarre backdrop for his lifeless remains.

I take my place alone on the front pew, my gaze fixed on the steel gray box and its occupant. The sanctuary is stifling, with only fans to stir the air. But my heart is cold. I search for something in Daddy’s face that will warm me, but even the part of him that I hated and feared is not there. His eyelids conceal the lifeless eyes. I long for them to open and wink at me like they once did long ago when there was still fun in them, and they twinkled like Grandpa John’s.

His skin is almost as white as his hair, but has a yellowish cast. Jaundice, the doctor told me. From the liver problems. His skin looks fake, like a Halloween mask, and I know it’s cold. I feel the stares on my back and hear the unspoken thoughts as the congregation wonders why my eyes are dry. I want to cry, not because I’m expected to, but because I know it will warm me inside. But I don’t.

Brother Paul takes his place behind the pulpit and begins to talk about Daddy’s life and I know this is hard for him. There isn’t a lot that he can say that is fit for a final speech about this man. When Mama died, the church was full and the preacher’s words flowed easily. There was much about her to praise.

Thinking of Mama warms my heart a little and I am able to feel something again. Her tenderness and thoughtless devotion to our family was what kept us all from falling to pieces in a thousand different directions. She was our anchor as we four kids stumbled along toward adulthood. It wasn’t until later that we lost our way.

Two years ago, Joey ran his truck into a tree and killed himself. Instantly, they said. Don is serving ten to twenty years at the state penitentiary for manslaughter. “You never knew how to hold your liquor,” Daddy always told him. I never understood what that meant and wondered if Daddy’s way was what could be called holding your liquor. I didn’t think so. My sister, June, lives in California and never comes home. Not since Mama died. She laughed when I called her about Daddy. “Thank God that son-of-a-bitch is finally gone,” she said. “Now maybe I can have some peace.” I pray that she will.

Daddy doesn’t look peaceful. I’ve seen lots of dead people and none of them really looked peaceful to me, just lifeless and cold. Except for Greatgranny. But there was a peace about her when she was still living. Daddy never looked peaceful when he was alive, not even when he was asleep.

A fly buzzes around my face and the overpowering aroma of carnations is giving me a headache. I never can smell carnations without thinking of a funeral and they always make my eyes water and my nose run. I dab at my nose with the handkerchief I had placed in my handbag before leaving the house. It‘s the one Mama embroidered for me for my high school graduation. I study the tiny blue forget-me-nots on the soft white fabric and gently finger the pale blue, crocheted border.

“I put forget-me-nots on it,” Mama told me when she gave it to me, “to remind you never to forget me.”

I close my eyes and say, as a prayer, “I’ll never forget you, Mama.” As I wipe my nose again, I hear whispers. “Look. She’s finally giving into her grief.”

I want to shout, “No! There’s no grief in me for this man. There’s no tears in me for him.” But I sit silently It’s just the carnations, I say to myself.

Mama said they used carnations for funeral flowers, because they lasted longer than other kinds. Mama knew a lot of things, little details like that. She wasn’t book smart, but she was wise and had an endless supply of information stored in her head.

Daddy hated that about her. Said she was “full of useless garbage that nobody cared about anyway.” I always thought it was jealousy talking when he criticized her like that. He had been to college, had a diploma to prove it and bragged about it at every opportunity, especially when he’d been drinking. It hadn’t helped him get a good job, though. It was just a piece of paper that hung in the living room of our tiny house.

“It’s not good for anything but to catch the wood on fire,” Mama would say under her breath when he threw his education up to her and called her an ignorant Okie.

The choir is singing “Amazing Grace,” the only church song that Daddy liked. I remember times when us kids were young and Mama would play on our old upright piano. This, of course, was before Daddy sold it for drinking money. When Mama sat down to play, Daddy would say over and over, “Play my favorite, Mae. Play it one more time.” Something tugs at my heart and I fight hard to push it aside.

I glance again at the lifeless shell in the casket. I mouth the words “son-of-a-bitch” and feel somehow liberated that I can speak those words in his presence. I know Mama would disapprove of me using such language in the house of the Lord and I regret giving into the impulse.

I think again of Mama’s funeral and I know my grieving for her isn’t finished. I miss her. I miss her soft-spoken manner and her gentleness. And I wonder, as I have many times, what our lives would have been like if Daddy hadn’t been there. I used to pray at night for him to be gone. Not that he would die. My Baptist upbringing and fear of eternal damnation wouldn’t allow that. But that he would decide to leave, like Mr. Watson who lived down the road had done. Just disappear and never come back. I prayed for that every night when I was growing up. Each day, I would come home from school, hoping Mama would be on the porch with the news. But there would be Daddy, sitting close to a bottle of some kind and looking some degree of mean.

When I was fourteen, I finally stopped and started praying for Mama to take us kids and leave. But she didn’t.

I never blamed Mama for not leaving him. I knew she couldn’t make it on her own and she seemed to love him through everything. I guess she saw something in him that none of us kids could see. When she died, my sadness was doubled, knowing her chance of a good life, of one without meanness and anger, were gone.

I hear Brother Paul’s funeral sermon coming to a close now. I’ve heard plenty of them in my lifetime and recognize the words. The pianist softly plays “Peace Like a River” and the choir joins in. Mr. Oliver, from the Oliver Funeral Home, and his son, Jim, Jr., walk toward the back of the small church and signal to each row in turn for its occupants to stand and walk to the casket. The mourners are few, but more than I expected. I recognize some of Daddy’s beer joint buddies, looking somber and painfully sober. They look as if they haven’t seen this side of happy hour in many years.

A few odd cousins, aunts and uncles and two of Mama’s good friends complete the procession and then the choir makes its way past the casket. I know the time for me to be alone with Daddy is coming, and I feel myself trembling inside. Even in death, he frightens me a little. Finally, Mr. Oliver noiselessly approaches and whispers in my ear to take my time. Time for what, I ask myself? Time to learn to love this man? Time to grieve for him? Time to shed a tear for his lost soul? I’ve spent twenty-two years on this earth and I don’t need any more time with this mean, old man, living or dead. I rise and walk firmly down the aisle and toward the front door. I hear Mr. Oliver and Jim, Jr. gasp and the pianist skips a beat. I don’t care, I think to myself. I don’t have to pretend any more. He can come back and haunt me if he wants to, but until then I don’t have to deal with him. And if God turns me away at the pearly gates because of my cold heart, and I have to meet Daddy again in Hell, I’ll face him then. Lucifer, too, I guess. But today, I don’t have to. I don’t have to go home, dreading his foul mood or his unpredictable temper. Today, I have been set free. I’ve had my life sentence shortened by the grace of God and Daddy’s liver.

The car from the funeral home drives me to the cemetery and I stand with Daddy’s friends and family members and watch the casket being lowered into the dry earth.

The smell of pine trees on the nearby knoll unlocks a long-hidden memory. I see myself as a child in the front yard of our old house, playing with a new litter of puppies in the shade of a small grove of pine trees. The fallen needles offer a cushion and I am lost in the moment of play, unaware that Daddy has come outside and is standing on the porch, watching me. Strong emotions tear at my heart as I allow memories of his angry, drunken voice and my terror as he is upon me, snatching the puppies away. I block further memories of the incident, horrible and chilling, from my mind and turn sideways for a moment. Knowing all eyes are on me, I suddenly feel embarrassed and turn slowly back toward the casket as Mr. Oliver places the fake grass over the gaping hole.

No, I cannot cry for this man. I cannot care the tiniest bit that he is dead. Do I even care that his soul is probably in Hell at this very moment, beginning its eternal sentence of damnation? I don’t want to think about that. I only know that Mama must be watching me from Heaven and feeling sad for me that I have become so hardhearted. I really want to cry, but I’m not sure what or who the tears would be for. I have shed many tears at night for myself and for my brothers and sister and for Mama, but it’s impossible to cry for the man I call Daddy.

Later at the house I shared with my father for over two decades, the small kitchen table is weighted down with food from the church. The funeral attendees, except for Daddy’s drinking cronies, stand around, eating cold ham and potato salad and speaking in hushed tones. Occasionally, someone approaches and speaks an encouraging or sympathetic word or phrase. “Maybe now your Daddy can find the peace he never had here on Earth.” Or, “He’s at rest now.” Or, my personal favorite, “Now your Daddy and Mama can be reunited in Heaven.” I hold my tongue and smile. They mean well. They care about me. Maybe they cared about Daddy at one time, before the alcohol and the bitterness changed him.

I walk to the thread-worn sofa and sit down next to Aunt Liz, Daddy’s sister. She smiles and puts her arm around me and gives me a hug.

“Have you decided what you’re gonna do now, Sarah Jane?”

“Stay here, I guess.”

“You could go anywhere you want to now. Start a whole new life, if you wanted to. Memphis is a wonderful place and I’d love to have you come stay with me for a while.”

“Thanks, Aunt Liz, but I like my job at the café and I like teaching Sunday School at the church. I don’t think I’d be happy anywhere else. I think I’ll just stay here, at least for a while, and get used to living alone. Who knows, I may love it now that I don’t have to…now that he’s…” My voice is surprisingly unsteady.

“Hasn’t been easy for you, has it, honey?”

“Not exactly,” I say, feeling much closer to some kind of emotion than I want to be.

“I brought something today,” Aunt Liz says as she opens her handbag and rummages around for a few minutes. “I thought you might like it.”

“Ah, here it is,” she says as she pulls out a faded photograph, yellowed and torn around the edges. She hands it to me and I look at my own image.

“It’s me,” I say with a smile. “I’ve never seen this one. When was it taken?” “Honey, it’s not you. It’s your Daddy. When he was just a year old. I found it when I was cleaning out the attic last spring. I meant to send it to you, but I was so busy after your uncle had his stroke and all.”

Her words continue, but my mind doesn’t hear. I look into the sweet face of this child who looks so much like me. Finally, without resistance, tears begin to form and spill onto my cheeks and chin and down onto my borrowed dress.

At last, I can cry for my Daddy. Not the one I knew all these years who tormented those around him, but the one in this picture that I hold in my trembling, unsteady hands. I look at his blond curls and impish smile, and I can almost feel the softness of his round body and his chubby hands. In this picture, he is innocent, his future ahead of him with endless possibilities, and he resembles nothing of the man we just buried. As the tears flow and the sobs come, I sit enfolded in the comforting arms of my aunt as she pats and rocks me. With the tears comes a pain that’s close to unbearable. Yet, somehow I know that beyond the tears, beyond the pain, there are better things to discover.