I stood at the back of the church where the air was dense and humid. The silk of my black blouse clung to the back of my neck. There was a breeze blowing but it did nothing to stop the suffocating feeling that permeated the atmosphere. Everyone was moving along like zombies but only I truly understood the irony of this because I was the only real person that was half dead. My other half lay in the casket at the front of the hundred year old building, her hands, as cold and dry as mine were clammy and warm.
I closed my eyes and counted to ten. The casket was still there and Hope’s picture was still on top of it. I turned around and looked at all the pictures and notices on the old bulletin board at the back of the church. There were a lot of new pictures from a recent overnight camp. Dozens of smiling teenaged faces were tightly pressed together as their owners all clamoured to be in the shot. Beautiful, young, alive faces. I turned around and yup Hope was still in that box, Ma was still holding on to it bawling and everyone was holding on to Ma, telling her that it was time for the pallbearers to carry the casket out of the church.
Casket… Just two days ago I had looked at the beautiful mahogany wood and referred to it as a ‘nice coffin’ to be scornfully rebuffed by the owner of the funeral home. Now I know that coffins were flat and tapered to the end and were not often made of such expensive material, the masterpiece I was looking at was a casket made of the finest mahogany to be shipped to the island. If the wood was that expensive I wonder why it wasn’t made into a table or some other piece of furniture that would be worth thousands as an antique in the future, but it wasn’t. It was made into a casket; for my sister. She deserved only the best.
Daddy had finally gotten Ma away and they were now both collapsed on the floor as the cousins and neighbourhood ‘play cousins’ filed in to take my sister back to the hearse. I moved out of their way when they passed by me. Until that moment it was as if I had been rooted to that spot. I craned my neck to get a glimpse of her. To wonder what it would be like to seen a body so similar to my own lying lifeless…and then I remembered. Closed casket, the accident had left its mark.
I followed them out and waited. As I waited, I heard my mother’s wail as she limped slowly down the aisle propped up by my father and my sister. I turned around only when my ears told me that they were at the back of the church where I had stood. I had once heard that a mother always knows when something is not right with one of their children because they feel it in their womb. My mother was clutching her womb for dear life and the pain on her face looked like labour itself. Funny though both hands were on one side of her womb. Maybe the saying was right.
I sat on a whitewashed boulder and massaged the crick that had found its way to the back of my neck. Eww, I had forgotten that I was sweating. I opened my purse and pulled out my black bandana. Ma had made a humongous fuss about it saying that it was indecent to bring a bandana into a funeral. She views bandanas as gang signs. I’m sure she would have accused me of being a “gangbanger”, a term she had accrued watching CNN, except for the fact that I have about fifteen different coloured bandanas. She probably thought that I was a member of more than one gang. I looked up and she was staring at me, burning straight through my hand. She looked as if I had slapped her in the face and then she turned back to my sister now in the hearse. It was fleeting, almost invisible, but I had gotten the message. Why had my angel died, why wasn’t it you.
I got up and I walked away. I walked out of the churchyard with its assortment of tombstones. There were a lot of crosses, an angel or two and normal ones with a lot of intricate detailing and profound quotes. I often wondered just who these people were and what great deeds bestowed them the honour of being buried there. My sister wasn’t going to be buried there she was going to be laid to rest in a quiet little cemetery lined by almond trees. She had gotten a shady spot, I had heard. Ma told our neighbour that she had demanded this of the keeper. The dry season sun was unbearable, she said.
As if on cue the rain began to fall. I ran under the awning of a shop front.
©Chase
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