Mama did not take advice from anyone, certainly not advice on me, but she said nothing at this softest of rebukes, only watched the woman and her son.
The boy, Lucien, pulled hard, and when the final nail was out, he and Lenore pulled at the splintering plank until it gave a terrible yawn. And then I saw:
a man curled in on himself like a dried mulberry leaf,
his skin gray, his eyes open and staring,
his pants damp. He smelled sharp,
like the spirits Lenore used to cut Mama’s medicines.
The woman gasped and reached for the boy and held him close. Lenore gasped, too. Mama let go of my hand and knelt down at the side of the coffin. She held her ear over the man’s open mouth, and her eyes went blank, that look she always got when she left this world and entered the one of her mind.
She stood up suddenly. “The arnica, please,” she said to Lenore, who hurried to the shelf over Mama’s worktable.
Lenore held the big glass jar close to her chest, then set it down beside the coffin. Without looking at her, never taking her eyes off the dead man, Mama held out her right hand.
“Thirty grains,” she said. “Exactly. Don’t skimp me, girl.”
Lenore counted them out.
One … two … three …
I watched the yellow pellets move from the jar to Mama’s open palm. Mama wet the fingers of her free hand with her spit, the better to gain purchase, and then pinched each grain, one by one, from her right palm and fed them into the dead man’s mouth.
fifteen sixteen seventeen
“He wasn’t like that when we put him in, Cathy,” the woman said. Lucien turned his face into her side, and I felt a flash of pride, that a boy bigger than me couldn’t watch what I could.
twenty-one twenty-two twenty-three
Thirty seeds passed between his lips.
The last five left them yellow.
Mama stood up. The man lay still in his coffin. Mama put her hands on her hips, frowned. Then she knelt down suddenly and whacked his back. The man sputtered and coughed and made the lowest moaning sound. His eyes blinked, and he rolled them up to look at all of us, from his resting place.
“There,” Mama said.
The woman sighed. “Cathy, I don’t know what we would have done—”
“Well, we don’t have to wonder.” Mama wiped her hands on her skirt. The man in the coffin was still groaning.
“He was so eager to keep going,” the woman said. “He and his sister came to us three days ago. He said he should leave before his sister. That he was strong enough to make it first. But when he saw how he had to come, he got scared. He was shaking something fierce.”
“I told him, ‘Me and Manman took a girl not but ten years old this way, and she was brave and didn’t cry the whole time,’” Lucien said. He was much recovered now and had stepped away from his mother’s side. “I said, ‘Be brave, Mr. Ben.’”
“Last night, he disappeared,” the woman said. “That’s why we left at the wrong time. He went missing and almost killed us all. He was down in Market Square, begging for whiskey to help him through. I said, ‘You fool,’ but he was already drunk by the time he got back. Pierre told me to wait till he sobered up, but if we’d done that, he would have kept yelling, drawing even more attention to us. It took Pierre and Lucien both to get him in the box, and the whole time he was hollering that we were trying to kill him. He kept saying ‘Damn, nigger, what’d I ever do to you?’”
Mama started to laugh but caught herself. Instead, she said, “How did you get him to be quiet?”
“I soaked that rag in some laudanum and stuffed it in his mouth, and then he fell right still. When we nailed the top on, I swear he was still breathing.”
Mama shook her head. “You always overdo it, Elizabeth,” she said, and then we all heard a great whoosh as Mr. Ben sat up in his coffin and began to cry.
“That black bitch right there promised to get me out. They all said she can get you out. No one ever said it was like this. In a goddamn coffin.” Mr. Ben was upright, and I could see him clearly. The color came back to him—his skin was a dark brown. I liked his face. It was soft and, I thought, handsome, made more so by his cheeks and chin. They rounded in to the pout of a spoiled and much-loved baby. I could not tell how old he was—his skin was smooth, but his hair, what was left of it, was turning gray and clipped close to his skull. He wore a graying shirt and britches and no hat. His hands were enormous and calloused. He was crying, loud, racking sobs that I did not think a grown person could make. He made no move to leave his coffin, and my mother and the woman made no move to comfort him.
The woman said, “Behave yourself, Mr. Ben.”
Mama pursed her lips. “Is this his final destination?”
“We take his sister to Manhattan next month.”
“Then perhaps Mr. Ben can wait for her there. Mr. Ben,” Mama said, “you will have to stay the night here, but I trust we can count on you to be quiet?”
Mr. Ben did not look at her; instead, he gazed up at the ceiling. “As long as I don’t ever have to sleep in any coffin.”
Mama laughed. “Only the good Lord can promise that.”
Mama had Lenore set up a bed for Mr. Ben by the fire, and she and the woman—Madame Elizabeth, she’d said to call her—took Mr. Ben by both elbows and helped him stand for the first time in twelve hours and walk around the room before settling down.
Mr. Ben went easily enough to sleep,
