The Lonesomes Ain’t No Spring Picnic

Me and Candy sitting in the swing, pumping it slow and easy, floating out in air so full of spring that if we close our eyes, we can smell the grass growing. We’re counting together, aiming on going up to a thousand. For no reason at all, except to show Jeffrie and Jimmie and Rhodie that there is one more thing we can do that they can’t. Just letting the devil git ahold of our souls, Grandpop would say. We stop when he come out into the yard. 

He’s got on his best dark-blue, marking-for-death suit, and he carry his pearl-handled walking stick in one hand and the Bible in the other. Candy and me cross our fingers and watch him walk down the street. When he’s out of sight, I open my mouth and my breath comes popping out like soap bubbles, I’m that relieved. 

I look at Candy and she’s shaking. “Why you still scared?” I say. “He done gone past your house.” 

Candy say, “I hear a screech owl last night right outside my window.” 

“You hold your wrist and choke it til you make it quit hollering and tell it to go away and mark somebody else for bad luck or dying?” 

“Yeah, but what if the devil git me alive for doing it the way your grandpop always preaching?” 

“I druther the devil git me alive than he git me dead,” I say, but I whisper it so that Rhodie can’t tattle-tale it the way she do everything, even the time she catch me and Candy with our hands on each other doing a thing that Grandpop say is an admonition to the Lord and eternal damnation to our souls. We still do it sometimes. We try not to, though, cause we’re scared of what God’ll do to us if He catch us. 

Candy is thinking of that now, I know, cause she look worried and I start worrying, too. We start up the swing again but there’s no joy in it now. The world that smell so clean and green and sweet just smell sad like funerals now, and we git down and go into the kitchen. 

Grandma is baking custard pies. She’s got a streak of flour, white as death’s pale horse, smeared across her face. She’s looking towards us but her eyes are going on through us, and she’s mumbling to herself. 

“Grandma?” I ask. “Grandma, who is it going to die?” 

Grandma don’t answer but start in rolling out the dough and I see she’s mad or upset from the heavy way she is leaning on the dough roller. 

“Grandma, who is it going to die?” I say again, and Grandma look at me finally and say, “Ain’t nobody going to die, if the Lord be merciful.” But her eyes got that look of her body being here and her mind over yonder someplace, like she’s two people at once. Make a chill run up and down my spine. What Miz Rose call a possum walking over my grave. But I don’t want to think about no graves now, especially my own, and I grab Candy’s hand. 

We just the other side of the door when Grandma start in mumbling again. “Lord, pore little Sue Ellen .... Lord, all alone and scared.” 

“Sue Ellen?” Candy ask, but I can’t answer because of the catball that’s suddenly caught in my throat. We go out and set on the front steps. Just quiet and holding hands. It is the first time we ever know Grandpop to mark someone so young for dying. Sixteen. 

After a long while Candy ask, “Why’d he want to go and do that to her?” 

I say, “He don’t do the choosing. The Lord do that. Grandpop just points out them that the Lord say to.” 

Candy say, “I wonder what she dying from?” 

“I know,” Rhodie say, crawling out from under the steps beneath us. “She dying from forcation.” 

“What?” me and Candy say together, and then I say, “Look here, Rhodie, Grandpop is going to git you for saying ugly words like that.” 

Rhodie say, “He say it hisself.” 

“That’s different. Preachers have got to say what the Lord tell them to and if He tell them to say a bad word, they gotta say it.” 

Rhodie plops the bottle against her doll’s painted lips and asks, “Why is forcation a bad word?” 

“Cause . . . just cause it is,” I say, trying to sound knowing. “And another thing, if you keep telling them lies, Grandpop is gonna strap you.” 

“What lies?” Rhodie cry, looking like she don’t even know what I’m talking about. Sometimes I wonder how she can be my sister, she’s so dumb. 

I say, “Them lies you tell about Sue Ellen dying from -” 

“Ain’t lies,” Rhodie say. “Sue Ellen dying from forcation. Deacon Riddell say it hisself and she his own daughter -” 

“Niece,” I say. “Just cause she live with them don’t make them her parents. And the word is fornication, dummy. Don’t nobody die from it.” 

“Do too. Grandpop and Deacon both say Sue Ellen dying from it.” 

“When they say that?” I ask. 

“A few minutes ago. When they come up the street. They in the church now.” 

I can see the church door open. “What else they say?” 

“Deacon tell Grandpop he raised her up in the straight and narrow, and he never allowed her to smoke or drink or paint her face or wear short skirts or mess around with boys.” 

I wonder again how Sue Ellen stayed so gay and friendly living with two people what always go round like their mouths stuck full of straight pins and they afraid to smile for fear they swallow one. 

I see Grandpop and Deacon come out of the church and go into the cemetery. 

“Picking out a spot for the grave,” Candy say. 

“Don’t have to pick one. They’ll put her beside her mama and daddy,” I say, but the two men walk past Sue Ellen’s parents’ graves and on to the far corner of the cemetery. Deacon bend down and start driving down the burial stake. 

There ain’t no graves at all in that section and I think of Sue Ellen with her pretty face and smile being put off all by herself and my eyes run over with tears and Candy keeps asking over and over, “Why they putting her there, Mary Ann? Why they putting her there?” 

She look at me and see I’m crying and she start crying, too. We don’t want to watch no more, and we go round the house and set on the bench beneath the bare wisteria vines that crook over into themselves like they got a hurt, too, like me and Candy has. I got a worry, also, that keep gnawing at me. I say, “Don’t see how Sue Ellen ... I mean, how she can . . . what with her not going with no boys.” 

“And no men, neither.” 

“Lizzie Beth Collins . . . she all the time with her. She the one. Got to be.” 

Me and Candy look at each other. Then we both move down the bench as far away as we can from each other and Jeffrie and Jimmie sneak up behind us and start shouting, “Bang! Bang! You dead!” 

They stop hollering suddenly and I look up and see Grandma standing on the steps. She say, “For shame . . . Lord, as if there ain’t enough killing and dying in this world without you two play-acting it. You, Jeffrie, you Jimmie, throw them sticks down right now!” 

Grandma ain’t quite five feet tall, not much more’n me and Candy and we eight — or almost — years old. But Grandma’s voice got ten feet of do-what-I-say in it, and the boys throw the gunsticks down quicker’n they be red hot coals. 

Grandma say, “Candice, your mama want you and the boys to go home now, and Mary Anne, you and Rhodie’s dinner is on the table. Pearl and me are taking some pies over to Miz Rose’s and the Deacon’s. 

After Rhodie finally git through dawdling over dinner, I go outside and Candy come over. We set on the steps but far apart. After awhile, Grandma and Miz Pearl come back. As they coming up the walk, Grandma saying, “But Lord, a coat hanger!” 

Miz Pearl look at me and Candy, and she poke Grandma in the ribs. They go up the steps past me and Candy. They set down in the rockers and Miz Pearl say, “That Deacon Riddell . . . expecting any minute for the corpse to be brought back from the undertaker, and all he can talk about is the disgrace.” Her and Grandma whisper to each other. 

When they hush whispering, Grandma say, “You see what I see? Two cats so full of curiosity that they going to bust open in a minute. Friday and the last spring holiday from school and you two waste it just setting around eavesdropping.” 

“We ain’t eavesdropping. We watching them dig Sue Ellen’s grave.” 

“And they digging it in the far corner,” I add. 

“Mary Anne, what you talking about? Her parents buried in the middle.” 

“Yes’m, I know but.... ” “They burying her in the new ground they take in. Way over at the far end of it,” Candy burst in ahead of me. 

Miz Pearl and Grandma both get up and look. 

Grandma say, “Lord, they right, Pearl. That pore motherless . . . .” She moan and press her hands against her belly like she got a pain in it somewhere.

Grandpop come into the yard and up the steps like he don’t even see Grandma or Miz Pearl or me or Candy, though we got to quick jerk back to keep his death-marking clothes from touching us. 

“Mr. Robinson, may I have a word with you, please?” Grandma say, low and respectful, like Grandpop preach in the pulpit that it’s the duty of a woman to be that way cause she neath her husband, being only his rib and he got to all the time stand with his shadow between her and God. 

“Speak ahead, woman,” Grandpop say. 

“Private. Please,” she say. 

“All right, but it will have to be fast,” Grandpop say. His eyes have that look they always git when he’s working on one of his pulpit-thumping, window-rattling, hell-fire-breathing sermons. 

Grandma shut the door behind her and Grandpop. We can’t hear what she saying but we hear him plenty good through the open window. 

“Fitting? Fitting? A fornicator and a murderer. What would be a more fitting place for us to bury her? Less’n we bury her outside the cemetery altogether?” 

“But just a child.” Grandma talking louder now. “What if it was Mary Anne or Rhodie? In a few years they will be young ladies…”

“And it will be the church’s duty to make them and all other young folks know that the wages of sin is death everlasting.” 

“Mr. Robinson!” Grandma cry. “You’re not fixing to preach a hell damnation sermon over that poor girl’s body, are you?” 

“The Lord puts the words in my mouth. I only say them.” 

“But…” 

“Enough, woman. I got to be about the Lord’s work.” 

Grandpop come back out and go across to his church. After awhile we hear Grandma talking on the phone. She’s on the phone a long time, forever it seem, and the warm spring afternoon run quickly towards cold sunset. The air so still and so heavy with flower smell and sunshine and wet, I feel like I’m looking through glass. Lying on my side in a goldfish bowl and looking across the yard and the cemetery at the grave diggers and the water so quiet and heavy over me that I can hear the thud-thump of the hard shovels against clay and the faroff distant sound of Grandma talking. 

When she finally come out, her eyes shining with mad. She say, “Lord! Men! The tribulation of them.” She walk up and down the porch. And down and up it. She moan as she walk. “Lord . . . that pore . . . Lord, that lily-livered woman wanting to do better but always obeying that rockhearted man of hers.” 

She stop pacing finally and stand staring at the church. “Lord, why you lay such a burden on womenfolks by putting that obeying thing in?” 

After awhile, she turn and go into the house and start rattling the pots, and Miz Pearl tell Candy to come along and help her get supper, cause afterwards they all going over to the Riddell’s. Candy look at me and I see how bad she hating the thought of going. I reach out my hand to her. Our hands are all but touching when we remember and jerk them back. 

I watch her go and the loneliness is a boil inside me aching to pop itself. I go inside. Grandma hears mine and Rhodie’s prayers and tucks us into bed. I ain’t sleepy and I git up and go to the bathroom. When I pass the opened door of Grandpop’s and Grandma’s room, I peep inside and see Grandma sitting all alone and quiet and reading the Bible. 

Seeing her like that gives me a bad case of the lonesomes. But everywhere is going to be lonesome from now on without Candy, I think, and I crawl under the quilt beside Rhodie. I think of Sue Ellen and the lonesomeness of her grave off by itself. I think of all the lonesomeness in the world. Then I think of dying and hellfire and I throw the covers back and pull my gown up and look at my body. I expect to see the red flickering of flames on it but the streetlights coming in through the shades make it look green. And I think that maybe it’s poisonous for me or anybody else to touch ever again. 

In the morning, Grandma and Grandpop don’t say nothing to each other. After we all dress up in our funeral-going clothes, we set in the living room and wait for the hearse to bring the corpse. Grandma set with her black purse in one hand and her Bible in the other and with the quiet all around her. Grandpop keep looking at her. Finally he say, as if he can’t stand it no more, “Idie, what is it? What’s ailing you?” 

Grandma set on as though she don’t even hear him, even though I know she do and even though she always before pay heed to every word he say, like the Bible says to. That’s the reason I decided I ain’t never going to git married but just always have lots of boyfriends. 

Grandpop ask, “Is it the grave?” 

Grandma don’t say nothing and Grandpop say, “Idie, you know that I got to say and do the things the Lord tell me to.” 

“And I got to do and say the things He tell me to,” Grandma speaks at last. 

Grandpop open his mouth wide to say something but just then he see the hearse coming and he grab his hat up and run out. 

Grandma follow him and me and Rhodie follow Grandma. Candy join me in the church yard and we follow the people inside. When we all seated, I look up and see Grandpop standing at one end of the casket and Grandma standing at the other end. I don’t understand that, cause everybody but the preacher is supposed to be setting. And I don’t understand it even more when Grandpop go up into the pulpit and Grandma go up behind him and stop in front of the pulpit stand so she between Grandpop and the congregation. Everybody look at her, not understanding. Everything so quiet you could drop a straight pin point down and hear it hit. 

Grandma open her mouth and speak and her voice is as quiet and peaceful as winter rain dripping past a bedroom window. She say, “I know that most, maybe even all of you, think it sinful for a woman to speak in church. Preacher” — she nod over her shoulder at Grandpop — “Reverend Robinson say it and I respect him as my husband and my preacher. But there is somebody else I respect, too. Some people. Though many say they don’t need or deserve respect. I say they do. I say until they git their respect this world going to go on being messed up.” 

People look at Grandma and some begin to shift around and clear their throats, small noises grating against the quiet, cracking the thick hull of it. 

Grandma look at the crack in the quiet and she draw the quiet closer around herself. She say, “Women — that’s who I’m talking about. Women all the time git blamed for every sin done under the sun. Some we do. Some we don’t. But nearly always the sin we do we don’t do alone. There’s a man do it with us and he just as guilty. Only he, being a man, don’t git the blame heaped on him like us women do.” 

She look down into the slowly widening crack and she say, “There’s someone, a man, or a boy what think he’s a man, who ain’t one bit less guilty than Sue Ellen. But I don’t see nobody pointing him out, accusing him of his sins. And he, more’n likely, setting right here among us.” 

The people turn slowly from looking at Grandma and begin alooking at each other and I see them wondering as I am. A boy or a man, I think - and not Lizzie Beth Collins. The worry that has been corked up inside me comes spewing out like half-frozen Coke. 

Grandma say, “Sue Ellen in years scarcely more than a child. But she die the death of a woman. If there be any woman here today what can love or pity her because of, or despite of, what she did, I invite that woman to step forward and help me in burying this, our dead sister.” 

Grandma stand waiting in the quietness that is so thick that I feel I can reach out and touch it, so soft and deep that I can put my whole hand in it. Grandpop still standing behind her, and he look like he don’t know what to do or say, and the people all look at Grandma and nobody move. Then suddenly Miz Pearl git up quick and go stand beside Grandma. Lizzie Beth and several other girls and some women go up. Me and Candy go up, hand in hand. 

Deacon Riddell jump up. The frowns in his face so deep you could plant a turnip patch in them. He cry, “Preacher, I object to such unorthodox proceedings.” 

Grandpop don’t say nothing, and Grandma go down and stand at the head of the casket. We follow her and I look down at Sue Ellen’s face. It look as calm and peaceful and quiet as Grandma’s. And so beautiful. The beautifulest face I ever see. Except Grandma’s now with the softness on it like light. She say, “Let us pray.” 

After the service, Miz Pearl and five other women act as pallbearers. They start to carry the casket towards the red mound of dirt in the far corner of the graveyard, but Grandma stop them. She pick Miz Riddell out of the crowd following along behind us. She say, “You, Lucille. You Sue Ellen’s only blood kin. You decide where you want her buried - alongside her parents, or way off in the corner by herself.” She point to the two mounds of dirt — one that we see yesterday and a new one in the middle of the cemetery. I stare at the nearest mound and Miz Riddell and everbody else stare at it. All except Grandma, who look as if there ain’t nothing unusual about a grave gitting dug all by itself in the middle of the night. 

Miz Riddell look at the grave. “Please,” she say. “She has been a daughter to me for twelve years.” Tears come running down her face. 

“An admonition unto the Lord,” Deacon interrupt. “I say she is to be buried in the grave I pick for her.” 

“No!” Miz Riddell say. She say it low at first. Then she say it louder. “No!” And her sobbing overtakes her. 

Deacon say, “The Bible says wives obey their husbands.” 

“The Bible says it all right,” Grandma say. “But it say a lot of other things, too, like love and mercy and he without sin casting the first . . . . ” 

“Right in God’s own Book. It say wives obey their husbands and . . . . ” 

“Maybe it say that just cause it’s written there by men,” Grandma say. 

Deacon’s face quiver like there is water under it boiling. “Heresy!” he screech. “Preacher! A heretic!” 

Grandpop been standing back in the crowd. He step forward now and lay a big hand upon Deacon’s shoulder. He say, “No member of my church going to call no other member a heretic. Especially no one going to call my wife one.” He look around at the crowd and then back down at Deacon. “The women have taken it upon themselves to conduct this funeral. Let us let them carry on with it,” he say and turn and walk slowly out of the cemetery and into his church. 

Deacon stare after Grandpop. Then he spit upon the ground and march out of the cemetery, too. 

When we pass the church after finishing burying Sue Ellen, I see Grandpop setting in his study. Even after it is dark out and the spring air is thick with a misting of rain, I still see him setting alone and lonesome looking. 

I lay awake a long time thinking of the day and Grandma and the strange ways of women and men. Rhodie flops over towards me and abandons her pillow and burrows into mine. I start to push her away but don’t. I lay breathing her breath and it smell warm and rich and sweet like the hot chocolate Grandma give us before putting us to bed. I think of Candy and, with the secret fear and guilty worry that Sue Ellen’s death brought gone, the thought of her is warm and gentle and sweet again in my mind.