“Thank you.”
“Why don’t we go in here.” I followed Mrs. Gresham to a room with the misnomer “The Comfort Suite,” like someone could ever be comfortable in a funeral home. Surprisingly, the room was pleasant enough with its large windows, a smattering of soft upholstered love seats angled about, and a respectable-looking desk in the corner. Still, the pleasant surroundings and the flood of sunlight could not erase the cool feel of death that permeated the building.
Mrs. Gresham directed me to a love seat. She sat beside me with her efficient-looking clipboard and papers resting in her lap. “We received your brother’s remains this morning. I know this is a difficult time, but have you decided on the type of arrangements you’d like to have for your brother?”
I hadn’t really. Who would I invite to his funeral? Besides Juice, I knew absolutely none of Sam’s friends. We had no blood relatives left. And I would cut off my own arm before even thinking about bringing Vera out here for his funeral. Then I thought, What would Sam want?
“Nothing extravagant.” I said. “Just a plain coffin, one simple floral spray, and a private cemetery service.”
*
I drove back through the town and cruised to a red light, crying and lost in my head. I had screwed up Sam’s life by always leaving him when he needed me the most. For all the years between us, I had never learned to allay my guilt over being the beneficiary of life’s good fortune when Sam was not. And always niggling in the back of my brain was the unforgivable thought that I had set all this in motion decades ago with my own plans.
Suddenly, the truck driver behind me blasted his horn. I jumped. The light was green. Rattled by the loud sound, I sped off, making a sharp turn onto Periwinkle Lane, the street where we lived before moving in with Willie Jay Groover. The street was littered with the same cornucopia of dilapidated shotgun houses. I was surprised they were still standing. The front yards were full of trucks and cars in some sort of disrepair, road-worn tires and other remnants left behind by shade tree mechanics. Unkempt little kids happily played in dirt and mud that should have been grass. One porch held an old lumpy sofa that doubled as outdoor seating, yellow foam stuffing sprouting from its cushions.
I stopped the car in front of a single-story shotgun house near the end of Periwinkle Lane, the windows now boarded up with wood planks and painted over with fading hues of red and black graffiti. Looking at this house was like looking into the cracked mirror of my psyche. There weren’t enough $2,000 dresses or Bernhardt linen office chairs in the world to erase where I came from. But driving through this town, I caught a glimpse of what I’d forgotten since entering the executive suite. I realized who I really was. I was a fighter. Black girls—big-boned and thick-skinned—fight all the time. We fight to be heard, to be recognized, to stay alive. We fight even when we don’t know we’re fighting. And now, despite all the labels society tried to place on me, I knew I wasn’t an angry Black woman. I was a fighting Black woman and I’d trained hard right here in this town.
I shook myself from the memory and drove off. A few minutes later, I was driving along the outskirts of town, finally pulling onto Red Creek Road. Not much had changed on this street either since the days when Martha, Sam, and I lived in Willie Jay’s house. The same squat ranch houses dotted the street, weathering the changes in seasons and occupants, every house the same as when I’d left back in August 1979. All but one. Willie Jay’s house was gone.
The view from the street where Willie Jay’s house stood stretched clear across to the river swamp that ran behind it. After his disappearance, Martha discovered he didn’t own the house. In fact, Sheriff Coogler did. He kicked Martha out and she was back to living off the generosity of friends around town. Coogler eventually died of a heart attack and the house was torn down for whatever reason. And I wasn’t mad about that, either. That house of horrors was gone along with all the gruesome memories it held. People in town eventually forgot about Willie Jay Groover and Martha Littlejohn and her two bastard kids.
A few minutes later, I drove up the gravel path leading to Vera’s farmhouse. I hadn’t been to this house since I moved Vera out of it two years before. The dull patina of time and weather covered the entire structure. Everything about the house was dismal and gray. The roof, the faded yellow clapboards, the bare pecan trees that framed it—all of it, gray. Back in the 1960s and 1970s, Vera’s house had been a lifesaving way station for a lot of women in Chillicothe and neighboring towns, too. Vera considered herself a public servant of sorts. She used to say she gave women something men would never give them: control.