Two Shades of Morning (15 page)

Chapter 11

When the phone rang before sunup, several days later, I had a feeling it would be Robert Dale. I’d also had a feeling that Sibyl would die in the morning while the sun hides behind where the sky stops. All he said was “Earlene, can you come over?” and I said “Yes” and sat on the couch, watching out my window for the black hearse to leave, for it to glide with a hum of finality up the road that had been fresh-graded just for Sibyl. It was over. And I can’t tell you how peaceful and yet eerie it felt, knowing she was gone now, how still the morning, how dead her house looked behind tatters of gauzy moss. Yesterday, the last of August, and today, the first of September and close enough to cool to call it fall. Yesterday, the geese hissing unsettled along the branch, and today, no sign of them anywhere, just stillness flattened under the bluing sky, the kind of hush that makes your ears ring. Dull thuds that don’t roll.

Walking over, I could see Robert Dale standing in the carport door, either waiting for me to come or for her to go. Waxy-pale in the stopping place of death. He didn’t speak, simply stepped aside for me to go in, for me to make coffee and sit silently beside him at the dining table till the sun sliced across the yard waking the shadows of the oaks. “She said you’d know what to take to the funeral home,” he said and got up to put his cup in the kitchen sink. “Thought you might go up there with me.”

“I’ll go tell P.W. and change clothes first.” Our voices resounded throughout the house as if it were empty. I’d always heard you don’t need to ask if somebody is dead; you can feel the absence of life, the very soul sucked away, and that’s how her house felt.

I walked back toward the trailer in the tracks of the hearse that had sketched her leaving—evidence—and still didn’t believe she was gone for good. The new sun was glinting on Aunt Birdie’s tin roof at the end of the road, and a white cloud passing rippled shadows across the fields like the hand of God waving.

“Sibyl’s dead,” I said, standing above P.W. sleeping on his stomach with his arms out-flung.

He opened the eye I could see, unblinking while he waited for it to sink in. Then he rolled to his back and placed both hands behind his head, staring up at the sun on the ceiling. No sound but the crickets outside the window.

I went on to the bathroom with my heart racing against the down-drag of having broken the bad news—the good news? just news—how it had been just like I might have imagined, though I never had, how good it felt, but never did, and soaping under the spray of water felt cleaner.

Back in the bedroom, I scrambled around under the edge of the bed for my black patent pumps, facing P.W. He turned on his side, away from me, turning again as I went to the other side to search for my lost shoe.

When I got to Sibyl’s house again, I sneaked in to keep from speaking to Mae, who I could hear talking on the phone in the kitchen, and followed the route of sunlight through the living room and up the dim stairs. “Robert Dale,” I called, standing in the open bedroom door. Hearing the shower in the adjoining bathroom, I went on in, and the first thing I saw was the bag that held the dress Sibyl had shown me on the butterfly hook by the closet door. A sealed white envelope was pinned to the black plastic. I unpinned it, reading first my name in tiny upright writing, then ripped it open and read the message: “Earlene, Maybe you did get the point after all. But I’m not sorry, not a bit. And I’m not dead because I’ll never be forgotten. Can you say that? P.S. Don’t forget the skin case. Sibyl.” I turned the note paper over, looking for more, toeing the snakeskin case on the floor. Nothing. Not even “thanks.” The shower cut off.

“Robert Dale,” I called, “I’m in here.”

“Okay.” His voice was strangled. I wondered about shock and how it worked and the term didn’t fit because we’d all known for so long that Sibyl would die.

I gathered the dress and the travel case and left, glancing back, almost expecting her to be seated on the bed, her head back-flung, laughing.

Going downstairs I met Mae, wringing her hands in her apron.

“Lawd, Miss Earlene,” she said, “if I knowed she was shorenuf fixing to die, I be right here to holp out.”

“Don’t worry about it.” I patted her arm and started to speak; her mouth flew open.

“Miss Earlene, you ever b’lieve she was?” she whispered, blaring her black liquid eyes.

“I don’t know.” I sat on the sofa. Had I really believed Sibyl would die? I hadn’t.

“Weren’t but yesterday me and Punk was right here talking to her,” Mae said, “and her done one foot in the grave.”

I couldn’t tell if Mae was really shook or just behaving the way she thought I expected. “Mae, I reckon you know once word gets around, everybody’ll be coming over with food.”

“Yas ‘um, sho will now.” “Just ask them in and tell them Robert Dale’s gone to the funeral home. Okay?”

“Yas ‘um,” she said. “I done called Punk to come on. Mr. Robert Dale say ain’t no need to but I do anyhow, now do you blame me?”

#

I drove Sibyl’s silver T-bird again, silently ruminating on things tangible and near: silence, so thick you could touch it, and Robert Dale with his head resting on the back of my seat.

“Turn on the radio, Earlene,” he said.

I toggled one of ten buttons on the sleek dash and the screech of violins flooded the car.

“Not that,” he said, bolting upright and fumbling till he found a rock station, then sprawling again.

I drove on between close flanks of pines that threw mesmerizing striped shadows from the sun that seemed to have shifted southward overnight: equinox. Sun and shadow tricks played on Robert Dale’s face—sporadically pale under the shave rash, then manly harsh and dark—and felt I knew him no better than I’d ever known Sibyl. And maybe I didn’t like him any better either. When we got to Tallahassee, I decided that he was asleep—his eyes were closed and he was breathing through his mouth—and there I was alone, driving Sibyl’s car, trying to find my way to the funeral home to take her clothes to be buried in. So strange, me in Sibyl’s car and her at the funeral home, powerless, immobile, limp. No, anybody else could die, but not Sibyl. She was right.

Even when we got to the funeral home, P.W. waking up and drawing back into his shell of silence, I didn’t believe she was there. I knew it, but I didn’t believe it. I didn’t believe they could have drained her vital body of blood and refilled it with preserving fluids. This had to be a ruse, one of the games Sibyl played; any minute now, she would glide from one of the toned-down rooms, gather her share of the hot-house flowers and we would go home, back to her shrine where she would once again match expressions with her portrait.

Robert Dale never said she was dead, neither did the mortician with the long silver face and tucked chin. In a restrained voice, he told us she had selected her rosewood coffin in advance and that we could view “the body” at six p.m. I did not believe that her breathless body, maybe reclining on a slab right now, would be transferred to the casket, all dolled up as she had been in the cameo earrings and dress, not without her overseeing the arrangements, the party we would throw.

I wished they would say it, the two men mumbling in the sunny room. Just two little words; such economy, such virtue in “she’s dead.” But they only stood, hands clasped reverently, while a matronly woman in mortician’s makeup took notes at a baroque desk.

“No, she didn’t have any kin,” Robert Dale mumbled, shifting feet and sliding his hands in his pockets.

What about her mother in Orlando? I’d known that the new ancestors in the portraits were phony, but a living mother she visited was real. “She took care of all the arrangements in advance,” said the silver-faced mortician, dismissing us.

Still no mention of death.

In the car, I asked him: “Robert Dale, what about her mama?”

“She didn’t have a mama, Earlene,” he said to the windshield. “Didn’t have anybody she ever told me about.”

“But she said...”

“Nobody,” he said, gazing out the window.

When we got back to the house, familiar Chevys and Fords were parked about the yard, leaving the driveway clear. I was relieved to be among people I knew again. Getting out with Robert Dale, I could smell baked ham and candied yams, butterbeans and pear pie. There were sounds of ice tinkling in glasses and kitchen clatter and muffled voices inside the house. I knew those voices and knew that tone reserved for death.

So, Sibyl was dead.

Miss Beulah Stark met us at the door, folding Robert Dale in her big bear arms and rocking as she said, “I’m shore sorry to hear about it, honey.” He bogged in her massive bosom with his face buried in her neck. “Lettie’s on her way,” she added.

He passed into a long line of waiting arms: Miss Winnie, second, wiped her coon-like hands on a dishtowel, then draped it over his shoulder while she hugged him. “I love you, sugar,” she said. “The Lord’ll give you strength.”

Letting go of P.W., she hugged me, saying, “I know y’all were real close.”

“Yes ‘um,” I said and started to cry—not for Sibyl, but for everybody in the world who had or would die, for everybody left to endure those church-lady hugs, to dissolve in the raspy hush of their nylon stockings. I didn’t fit there, receiving condolences from the community/church funeral brigade, but they brought death home to me. So, while they came straight off Robert Dale to me, I bawled, ugly gulps that set it all in motion, all the time hating myself for putting on. But I was really crying, crying because I felt phony, because I had all these bad thoughts running through my head. I was crying because of the general and universal powerlessness over death. Crying simply because the presence of those community mothers made me cry.

My own mother pulled in behind Miss Eunice and rocked me, saying, “It’s okay, baby, it’s okay,” sniffling. And I knew they made each other cry too.

Finally, after they’d all hugged me, Robert Dale turned around and hugged me too, and I felt truly ashamed but still couldn’t stop crying. Miss Thelma brought me her ironed handkerchief with the embroidered violets, her funeral handkerchief, and I thought of all the times I’d seen it, and I cried harder, lumping all the wakes I’d been to with Mama and Aunt Birdie into one prodigious mourning.

Miss Louise and Miss Lavenia walked me between them to the sofa where they had set Robert Dale and brushed back my sweaty bangs with their cool smooth hands.

“Get her some tea,” said one of them.

“It’s all right, sugar,” another said.

Miss Posey squatted before me with her brown eyes flickering through my tears. “Sibyl wouldn’t of wanted you carrying on over her.”

Oh yes, she would, I thought, and cried afresh, wrenching, painful sobs. I was tired—really tired. Tired of crying, tired of sleeping by myself, tired of the whole ceremony, and we were only into the first phase of the wake.

Miss Sallie Walker toddled to the sofa with a glass of tea floating picked ice. I sipped the syrupy drink and tried to swallow while they watched, their sweet droll faces saying, Once it goes down, she’ll be all right. The house ticked like a clock and the out-of-place smell of turnip greens wafted.

“Better now?” said Miss Lavenia, towering behind petite Miss Posey.

“She’ll be all right,” said Miss Thelma, slicking back my bangs till I could see them scutting like a rooster’s cone. “Won’t you honey?”

“Yes ‘um,” I said, and they all smiled, unleashing a round a heavy sighs.

Through the bay window, I watched Miss Lettie’s drab brown car tool through the oaks and park in front of the house. She got out, craning her tube-like neck, and tugged her yellow shirt down on her brown pants. She reached into the rear seat for two stuffed grocery bags, then tripped on toward the house, gazing about as though looking for some link to the old place. But when she got to the door, she literally burst through, eyes stretched in her wizened face. Her cropped brown hair made her look girlish. Seeing everybody, her old friends, she gave off a long hurt-dog squeal, dropping the bags, and the room full of women swooped toward her, emptying the space around the sofa. They hugged and clucked, then ushered her over to Little Robert Dale.

Any fool could tell that those women, Miss Lettie’s old friends, had considered Sibyl a home-wrecker—probably a house-wrecker, too—and wanted Miss Lettie back with her baby brother even if it was over his wife’s dead body.

Robert Dale stood to hug Miss Lettie, a dutiful half-hug, and she clung to him, steadily shushing. “I went by and told Mama, honey,” she said, “course, she didn’t hardly know what I was asaying.” Then she sat between us with one hand on his knee, planting sharp pats.

“Hey, sugar,” she said to me, “how you been doing?” “I’m fine, Miss Lettie.” I could smell her breath, something old.

While she batted her lashless brown eyes, taking the room in, she kept stringing sentences—”Say what you will about Sibyl, but she sure knew how to fix stuff up.” Her eyes roved from portrait to portrait of the make-believe ancestors, then landed on Sibyl’s.

“Y’all come on and eat a bite,” Miss Louise called from the kitchen.

The dining table and kitchen counters were covered with bowls and platters of food, foil peeled back on each dish. While we served our plates, more food came in, and folks kept stopping Robert Dale in line to hug him. I took my plate and went to sit in one of the folding chairs lining the dining room walls, eating alone to keep from being set off crying again.

During dinner, Mr. Lyde brought another table from the school lunchroom and set it up under the double windows in the dining room, with only walking space left between it and the dining table. Wedged onto the tables were fried chicken, baked ham, roast beef, chicken and rice, chicken and dumplings, vegetables, put up and fresh, and every casserole the ladies could conjure from canned soups. How in the world they cooked it all so quick, I never knew.

Somebody set up a card table in the living room and it too soon filled up with chocolate cakes, pound cakes, cobblers and pies. The ladies were all eating, talking, taking turns washing dishes—not in Sibyl’s dishwasher. They rotated from the sinks to the refrigerator, packing away salads with Sibyl’s leftovers. Mae must have been sent home, and I hadn’t seen hide nor hair of Punk. Mr. Lyde set out to get an ice chest.