We all stand around the casket. A bunch of flowers lie on top of it—wildflowers. My father must have picked them himself, probably right here in this field, and arranged them carefully over the shiny mahogany. His shoes are covered in flecks of red clay. My heart threatens to burst, picturing him bending over with his bad back to pull flower after flower from the dirt.
I’ve been trying to avoid looking at the coffin, same as I did at Justin’s funeral. But there it is, not five feet away. It’s closed, though I know my grandmother is in there, dressed to the nines just like she would have wanted: her favorite hat, a floral dress, her best white silk gloves. Picturing Gigi trapped in there sends pinpricks along my spine. But it’s the hole, the giant hole in the ground, that makes my knees buckle. Shaun links his arm with mine. “I got you, sis. I got you.”
Uncle Rod and his family stand on one side of the minister, Shaun, Daddy, Momma, and I on the other, forming a tight row. The pastor waits for the small nod from Momma indicating it’s time to begin. Shaun holds me tighter. The minister starts to recite from Psalms. His voice, higher than Pastor Price’s, is clear and strong and bounces off the ring of imposing cypress trees that surround us. Momma has asked me to read a poem. When the minister is finished, I slip the folded piece of paper, damp with sweat, from my dress pocket. My hands shake, and I’m reminded of Justin’s cousin, Malik. The poem, “On a New Year’s Eve” by June Jordan, was a favorite of Gigi’s.
“I don’t really understand it altogether, but it stirs somethin’ in you, don’t it?” she’d said once.
It did. It does.
I’m suddenly self-conscious, shy, even though this is my family. I clear my throat and begin to read. “？‘Infinity doesn’t interest me, not altogether anymore.…’？” I’m speaking in my newscaster voice; imagining a camera in front of me makes this easier. I purposely slow down on the last line. Maybe if I keep reading forever, we’ll never get to the part where we have to put Gigi in that hole.
“？‘All things are dear that disappear… all things are dear that disappear.’？”
Not long enough. It’s over.
Momma steps forward and hugs me. “That was beautiful, Leroya, beautiful.”
Somehow the slip in my name feels exactly right.
I return to my place in the circle. The minister swats the flies away from his face and recites Genesis 3:19, “？‘For dust you are and to dust you will return,’？” before he calls for us to bow our heads.
After a moment of silence the pastor asks if anyone else would like to speak.
The only sound is a rustle in the trees until Shaun calls out, “Hey, pastor, what do you call a pony with a cough?”
The poor man looks so confused, but I’ve already broken into giggles. I holler out the answer: “A little hoarse.”
God, Gigi loved these stupid little riddles. She had hundreds of them and would trot them out until they were as worn as old sheets.
Daddy jumps on the bandwagon. “But son, do you know why the octopus crossed the ocean?”
“Why no, Dad, I don’t.” Which is a lie; Shaun has only heard this one five hundred times. Gigi told it to us at the hospital just last week, when she found a reserve of energy.
“To get to the other tide.”
All eyes turn to Momma, expectantly.
“Oh, y’all get out of here with this nonsense. This is not the time.” Her eyes are glued to the casket. There’s a long pause while we figure out what to do next, and then Momma’s voice, still looking at the casket like she’s talking to her mother.
“Why do seagulls fly over the sea?” She doesn’t wait for an answer. “Because if they flew over the bay, they’d be bagels.” And then she is laughing, laughing so hard tears stream down her face. “God, that woman’s jokes were ’bout the corniest I’ve ever heard.”
We’re all laughing now. The pastor looks dismayed at first and then gives in to it, a substitute teacher who’s lost control of the classroom.
I bring my hands to my face and find that my cheeks are wet. The tears have come. They stream down like rain; like Momma’s, they’re happy tears, or at least a mix of happy and heartbroken. I think of Gigi looking down on us right now, all of us together, laughing wildly on a small patch of land in rural Alabama on this warm December day, and I know it’s just as she would have wanted it.
For the rest of the night we can’t stop telling Gigi jokes. It even gives Momma and Uncle Rod something to bond over. But no one pushes their luck; not an hour after we return from the cemetery, my uncle and cousins retreat to the RV. They plan to get an early start back to Memphis in the morning, so now it’s only us.
Daddy scrounged up enough wood in the backyard to start a small fire in the fireplace and puts an old Sam Cooke record on the ancient record player in the corner. Shaun found a dusty bottle of homemade whiskey in the cupboard. Even Momma drinks it. I make the mistake of sniffing it before I sip, and the scent alone burns my nostrils.
“Oh God, what is this?”
“Whatever they made down here when they couldn’t find anything else.” Shaun shrugs and slams back what’s left in his glass.
“I don’t know if we should be drinking this.”
“Don’t be a priss. Bottoms up.”
I hold my nose and throw it back. The concoction tastes like it’s made from two ingredients: gasoline and tree bark. Even after I chase it with the dregs of a nearby can of warm Coke, the noxious flavor clings to my tongue.
I’m still furiously swishing soda around my mouth when Momma gets up and returns to the table with a cardboard box filled with old photo albums. “Look what I found when I was cleaning out the hall closet earlier.”
There’s a tan leather one so old and dry it’s broken into a web of cracks like a desert landscape. Newspaper clippings and recipes stick to the bottom of the box. I grab a tattered index card that features the ingredients and steps to make rhubarb pie in faded cursive.
“Can I have this?”
“Excuse me? Why? When was the last time you even turned on your stove?” Shaun jokes.
He has a point. I don’t think I’ve ever made anything from scratch in my entire life, but suddenly, making this recipe is important to me. It doesn’t matter that I’ve got no idea what rhubarb even looks like; I’m going to make this pie for Christmas. Why I’m suddenly seized by the urge to be some sort of Carla Hall wannabe is beyond me, but I’m desperate for any way to feel connected to Gigi. How many times had I watched her, her arms speckled with bright white flakes of flour, kneading dough or squinting over vats of hot grease she kept in a giant old tomato can that never moved from the back of the stove? How many times had I rolled my eyes as she joked—half joked—to me, “Get over here and learn to cook if you’re ever gonna get a fine man?” How many times had she rolled her eyes at my pretentious lectures about the patriarchy. “Girl, there ain’t nothin’ wrong with wantin’ a man.”
“Putting a husband aside, cooking is history,” she once told me as she made biscuits. “Me and my momma and my momma’s momma before that have been making these ’zact same biscuits. That’s a bond, ya hear. It’s not much—some flour, some water, some salt—but it’s what we had and it’s a legacy, a connection.”