The day before the funeral, I ask my mother if we have time to go to Macon to buy me a dress. I don’t have anything appropriate, only jeans and sundresses, but Mama goes to her room. She comes back out with a navy-blue dress with lace at the collar. There are low, dark heels, pantyhose, and a slip, all in my size.
“I had a dream about Dear passing, so I packed this for you. But I put it out my mind. You know, sometimes I dream about something and it never even comes true. I was hoping it would be like that this time.”
Ever since I was little, my mother would say that in Chicasetta it wasn’t a rare Black funeral that went badly, it was a rare one that didn’t. And there aren’t any cremations, either. Black folks in Chicasetta don’t believe in that: it’s not natural. That’s what they have the insurance man for. You pay him every month （or every two weeks, depending on the schedule）， and no matter how poor you are, you have enough for a suitable burial. If you’re too poor for the burial insurance, Mr. Cruddup solicits donations for the homegoing. He’s closemouthed about your business, too. Mama says you can control the casket, the flowers, what part of the Black cemetery in town you’re laid to rest in, but you can’t control the guest list. It looks bad keeping somebody from paying their respects. What’s more complicated is when someone in your family misbehaves.
Before the funeral, Mama tells me a secret, one I should never mention: Aunt Pauline isn’t Dear Pearl’s biological child. She raised the baby girl as her own after Annie Mae, the child’s mother, abandoned her. Annie Mae’s my granny’s blood sister, but she’s been gone so long that if her child hadn’t been given a photo of her, Aunt Pauline wouldn’t have even known the woman if she passed her on the street. The photo and a few stories are all that’s left of Annie Mae: Her favorite color. （Blue.） That she played the trumpet like an angel of God. That she never could stand wearing a dress.
My granny never had made a sign that Aunt Pauline was adopted, and the two of them were so thick. So it didn’t make sense when my granny cut a jig at Mr. Cruddup’s funeral home, screaming that she wanted a white coffin, instead of the maroon one Aunt Pauline had picked out, Mama says—she was there at the funeral home when it happened. But then again, Aunt Pauline wanted to control the scriptures, to read Psalm twenty-three, instead of Ephesians, chapter two, verse eight. Aunt Pauline pulled out their mother’s Bible to show which scripture she’d loved the best, but Miss Rose told her that didn’t count for nothing. Everybody knew their mother never had learned to read. Mr. Cruddup whispered he would leave them to make the choice, but even after that Miss Rose and Aunt Pauline argued about what food to serve at the repast. One wanted pork chops, pound cake, and rolls. The other wanted fried chicken, sweet potato pie, and biscuits. At least they could agree upon the greens.
It takes Uncle Root to bridge the feud. When he shows, Mama tells me to go back to my room with my sisters. Grown folks are talking, but she doesn’t fuss at me when I hang in the doorway of the living room. I hear the old man tell my granny and Aunt Pauline they ought to be ashamed of themselves. What kind of daughters behave this way, when their mother has only recently been called to Glory? It’s a scandal, and if the two don’t start acting right, he’ll make the decisions for the homegoing and the repast himself. He’s paying for most of it, after all. Because that fifteen-hundred-dollar burial policy his sister had taken out didn’t begin to cover the cost.
Thursday afternoon, we walk into the funeral as the organist plays an instrumental of “Precious Lord,” lingering on every third note. Our family moves behind the white casket carried in by white-gloved men. We can’t hold all the mourners for Dear Pearl at our family church, so the venue’s been moved to the gymnasium of the new high school. Men carry in flowers and announce the last name of a family as they hold up each arrangement. So many flowers, as if a garden’s bloomed under the gym’s basketball net. All the older ladies wear hats. When Elder Beasley steps behind the podium, there’s a flurry of white, as those same women pull out handkerchiefs. He begins with Psalm twenty-three, before moving to Ephesians.
Later, at the repast in the high school’s cafeteria, my mother says, what a beautiful homegoing. The adults at our table nod in agreement as they nibble at their plates of fried chicken, pork chops, greens, and candied yams. Those store-bought, faintly sweet, white rolls that everyone in the south seems to like, and biscuits that have chilled. There are many different flavors of cake. No one at our table mentions how the always dignified Uncle Root wept loudly behind the podium during his eulogy until my mother had gone up and hugged him, before walking him back to his seat. Or that Uncle Huck had been too broken up to attend his mother’s funeral, so he’d sent his boyfriend in his stead. The mourners only remark that it’s so nice that Miss Rose and Aunt Pauline have made up. At the grave site out on the family farm, they’d watched as the casket was lowered into the ground and the two sisters held each other.