“Shhh.”
“And gray-blue eyes.”
“Hush now, hush.”
“And thin nose.”
“Hush, girl, hush.”
“He’s never going to like my hair.”
“Hush. Hush. Hush, girl, hush.”
The neighbors took up a collection because Pilate and Reba had spent everything getting Hagar the things needed to fix herself up. It didn’t amount to much, though, and it was touch and go whether she’d have a decent funeral until Ruth walked down to Sonny’s Shop and stared at Macon without blinking. He reached into his cash drawer and pulled out two twenty-dollar bills and put them down on the desk. Ruth didn’t stretch out her hand to pick them up, or even shift her feet. Macon hesitated, then wheeled around in his chair and began fiddling with the combination to his safe. Ruth waited. Macon dipped into the safe three separate times before Ruth unclasped her hands and reached for the money. “Thank you,” she said, and marched off to Linden Chapel Funeral Home to make the fastest arrangements possible.
Two days later, halfway through the service, it seemed as though Ruth was going to be the lone member of the bereaved family there. A female quartet from Linden Baptist Church had already sung “Abide with Me”; the wife of the mortician had read the condolence cards and the minister had launched into his “Naked came ye into this life and naked shall ye depart” sermon, which he had always believed suitable for the death of a young woman; and the winos in the vestibule who came to pay their respects to “Pilate’s girl,” but who dared not enter, had begun to sob, when the door swung open and Pilate burst in, shouting, “Mercy!” as though it were a command. A young man stood up and moved toward her. She flung out her right arm and almost knocked him down. “I want mercy!” she shouted, and began walking toward the coffin, shaking her head from side to side as though somebody had asked her a question and her answer was no.
Halfway up the aisle she stopped, lifted a finger, and pointed. Then slowly, although her breathing was fast and shallow, she lowered her hand to her side. It was strange, the languorous, limp hand coming to rest at her side while her breathing was coming so quick and fast. “Mercy,” she said again, but she whispered it now. The mortician scurried toward her and touched her elbow. She moved away from him and went right up to the bier. She tilted her head and looked down. Her earring grazed her shoulder. Out of the total blackness of her clothes it blazed like a star. The mortician tried to approach her again, and moved closer, but when he saw her inky, berry-black lips, her cloudy, rainy eyes, the wonderful brass box hanging from her ear, he stepped back and looked at the floor.
“Mercy?” Now she was asking a question. “Mercy?”
It was not enough. The word needed a bottom, a frame. She straightened up, held her head high, and transformed the plea into a note. In a clear bluebell voice she sang it out—the one word held so long it became a sentence—and before the last syllable had died in the corners of the room, she was answered in a sweet soprano: “I hear you.”
The people turned around. Reba had entered and was singing too. Pilate neither acknowledged her entrance nor missed a beat. She simply repeated the word “Mercy,” and Reba replied. The daughter standing at the back of the chapel, the mother up front, they sang.
They stopped at the same time in a high silence. Pilate reached out her hand and placed three fingers on the edge of the coffin. Now she addressed her words to the woman bordered in gray satin who lay before her. Softly, privately, she sang to Hagar the very same reassurance she had promised her when she was a little girl.
Some
“My baby girl.” The three words were still pumping in her throat as she turned away from the coffin. Looking about at the faces of the people seated in the pews, she fastened on the first pair of eyes that were directed toward her. She nodded at the
