we did, Daddy. Yes, we did need you. It was not easy for Muh’Dear and me to get to where we are now. You weren’t there to see me grow up, graduate, nothing. You would have been proud of me. Do you know—”
Holding up his hand, Daddy cut me off and said in a voice so weak I could barely hear him, “I am proud of you, child. I always was.”
I was glad that Lillimae returned to the car before the conversation could get out of hand. She was fanning her face with the wide-brimmed black hat she had purchased for the funeral to match the black tweed suit she had on. Before she could get all the way back into her car, Daddy grabbed the back of her seat and asked, “Lillimae, you all right? Ain’t you gwine out to the cemetery to see your mama get buried?” I was surprised at how strong he sounded now.
Lillimae mumbled something unintelligible under her breath and slapped her hat back onto her head backward. Then she said in a hoarse voice, “As far as I’m concerned, I done already done that.”
Daddy groaned and slid back into the corner of the backseat, rubbing his head.
Before Lillimae started the car, she glanced back at the church. I followed her gaze and watched as four grim-faced pallbearers hauled her mother’s casket out of the church and slid it into the back of a dusty hearse. As Lillimae eased her car away from the curb, a faint smile crossed her face and stayed there. We rode home in complete silence.
Daddy only stayed in the house long enough to get out of his suit and to get his fishing equipment. He took a coal-oil lamp to the lake with him so I knew that he was planning to spend as much time fishing as possible.
A few minutes after Daddy’s departure, Lillimae joined me on the living room couch. She was clutching a damp handkerchief, tapping her eyes and nose. She had changed into her ratty old housecoat and had removed her shoes. I was surprised to see a serene look on her face. Despite her swollen, bloodshot eyes and smeared lipstick, she looked so much better now.
Surprisingly, I had shed a few tears myself the night before. There was something about people dying that did strange things to my emotions, even when it was somebody I didn’t really care about. Especially people who died from unnatural causes. I had even cried when my best friend, Rhoda Nelson, killed old Mr. Boatwright and that sucker had raped me. Thinking about Rhoda made a huge lump form in my throat. The lump would have been even larger if I’d known then that Rhoda was in the process of returning to my life to wreak more havoc.
“Are you all right?” I asked, touching Lillimae’s shoulder.
She nodded. “I am now.” She didn’t look at me as she continued speaking in a steely voice. “Mama didn’t even look like herself. She looked like a dried-up old prune. Her skin was all pasty and pale. Her neck got broke in the car crash so her face looked lopsided. They said the car looked like a train had slammed into it. The drunk that broadsided her car walked away with nothin’ but a few scratches and a few cracked bones. Him bein’ Black made it even worse. Roxanne’s husband was mumblin’ all kinds of racist shit about goin’ after that drunk. Right there in the church with Reverend Spool just a foot away! Motherfucker.”
I released a deep, painful sigh. My head felt so heavy I could barely move it, but I managed to shake it. “So the people in the church did talk to you,” I said, my hand still on Lillimae’s shoulder.
Lillimae shook her head so hard her teeth clicked. “Nobody said nothin’ to me. I didn’t get close enough to none of ’em for nobody to talk to me or hug up on me like they was doin’ one another. I didn’t want none of that evil racism to rub off on me,” Lillimae hissed. “I heard the folks in the pew in front of me talkin”. That’s how I know what I know. Then that cracker preacher was goin’ on and on about what a good Christian woman Mama had been and how much she had done for her family.” Lillimae let out a strange laugh. “Gnat butter! I had to hold myself back from jumpin’ up and tellin’ them devils all just how much she done for me! No woman in her right mind would turn her back on her kids.” Finally, Lillimae turned to face me. “Daddy done his job and hers because he loved his kids—”
I stared at the floor. My eyes started to burn and itch and I could feel bile rising in my throat.
“Shit.” Lillimae’s last comment flustered her more than it did me and she couldn’t hide it. She started blinking real hard and stroking my arm. “Now you know I didn’t mean nothin’ by that.” She rearranged herself on the couch and grabbed my wrist. “Daddy is a good man, Annette. I hope you know that now.”
I nodded. “I know that. I always did.” I sniffed and forced myself to keep a straight face. “Uh…how did you feel being there for the first time with the rest of your family?”
Lillimae turned away again. She blew her nose into her handkerchief with a honk so profound it seemed to bounce off of the wall. It took her a moment to compose herself. She started to talk with her eyes half closed and out of focus. “I couldn’t have felt more distant from them if I was on another planet. The other side of my family was right there a few feet away from me, cryin’ and huggin’ one another. Both of my miserable sisters are pregnant and looked like they wanted to deliver right there in the church. I couldn’t comfort them and they couldn’t comfort me. The only thing separatin’ us was blood.”
“Black blood,” I reminded.
CHAPTER 13
The death of Lillimae’s mother had taken a toll on Lillimae. She stumbled around the house like somebody afflicted with polio, running into the living room wall a few times and accidentally stepping on the tail of that old cat from next door. For the rest of my visit there was a look of sadness in her eyes that found its way to me. All the mascara and Visine I used to try and brighten up my eyes didn’t help.
It seemed like every time some new sad thing happened in my life, I grieved for all the other sad things that I had already endured. The good thing was, I had enough pleasant things going on in my life now so there was some balance. However, I was glad that I had only one more day before my departure. I was anxious to return to my job, my house, and my man.
The day before I left Florida, Daddy insisted on taking me out to dinner at what he considered a “fancy” restaurant. He took me to Doug’s Bar-be-cue, a rib joint around the corner from his house. The deeper I traveled into Daddy’s drab neighborhood, the more sinister it looked. Unkempt, suspicious-looking men sat on the porches of a deserted house across the street from the rib joint, sharing bottles and whatever it was they were smoking. There was broken glass and discarded trash everywhere I looked. An old car that somebody had torched was sitting on the street and young kids were crawling in and out of it. Every house had bars on the windows, even the broken windows. Two boys that looked young enough to be my sons, their cheap plaid shirts hanging open, were kneeling on the sidewalk throwing dice in front of the restaurant. We had to walk around them.
“Keep a strong grip on your pocketbook,” Daddy warned me in a loud voice. “This street is the butt-hole of Miami.”
He led me into the restaurant with his arm around my shoulder and guided me to a booth in a corner next to the kitchen. There was so much smoke coming out of that kitchen, anybody who didn’t know any better would have thought that the place was on fire.
A cassette player, held together with duct tape, was sitting on the counter next to the cash register. An old B.B. King song, “The Thrill Is Gone,” was playing.
“I wish Lillimae had come with us. That gal love her some barbecue,” Daddy told me, wrapping one of the yellow plastic bibs that the restaurant supplied around his neck after we had placed our orders. “I done told her we don’t know when we’ll see you again.” He blinked and wiggled his nose, smiling faintly. “Long as it took me to get you to come down here and all.”
“I’ll just be a phone call away, Daddy,” I said, drinking ice-cold water from a huge plastic glass.
Our food was delivered a few minutes later. I wasn’t that hungry but I managed to eat most of the rib sandwich that I had ordered. For Doug’s to be as popular as Daddy claimed it was,