I see it through the window: Mike hits Queenie Grace. I flinch when Mike’s hand meets elephant skin. Grandma keeps her arms crossed as if trying to hold her heart inside.
I sit straight up in shock and worry, and so does Henry Jack.
Queenie Grace bellows. Grandma stands up straight and yells at Mike; Trullia yells at Grandma.
The people in the funeral home get all awkward and uncomfortable, shuffling and shifting in their seats. The funeral home man closes the lid of the casket.
A tear slips from my eye, and Henry Jack pats my back. That makes it worse, and more runaway tears escape.
I will never again see that face.
I bite my cheek. I will not cry, not again; I won’t. Nope. I’ll keep it inside. Keep it inside where it belongs.
We shamble outside, in a line. Some people cry; others hug.
“I’m sorry,” people say to Grandma and me. I feel as if so many people care: about me, about Grandma Violet, about Grandpa Bill. If sorry could bring my grandpa back to life, he’d be standing here smiling.
We go through the parking lot to where men in suits have placed little white flags of surrender on the cars that are going to the cemetery. Trullia’s car has a flag, and we all pile in.
Trullia drives. Her eyes are red and hard in the rearview mirror. Nobody talks and there’s just the sound of wheels on road. The turn signal, the squeak of the brakes.
Queenie Grace follows behind the line of slow-moving cars. She trudges along as if she’s a vehicle, too, part of this sad car parade. She follows us all the way to the Restful Souls Cemetery, and then she waits outside the curved iron gates.
We park outside of the graveyard. Everybody gets out of their cars, including us. It starts to rain, tiny droplets, but the sun still shines. A few people pop open umbrellas.
The casket is brought out of the hearse. Men with respectful expressions carry the coffin and place it carefully under a green tent.
There’s talking, prayers, flowers, bowed heads, tissues. Grandma clutches her hands into fists.
And then it’s all over. He’s in the ground, forever and ever. Grandpa Bill is gone.
We are all leaving the cemetery, just as Queenie Grace is going in. She plods determinedly through the gates and straight over to the open hole of earth that holds her best friend in a blue box. She lowers herself slowly to the ground, huge body trembling.
Queenie Grace just lies on the cool, damp ground, sprawled over that open rectangle shape in the earth.