I staggered through a fog in the days that followed. I did not aim to do things, go places, say words. There were simply random moments when the fog lifted and I found myself in the middle of a doing, a place, a sentence.
Her funeral was at a church called Heaven Help Us in North Philadelphia, where a surviving sister lived. I didn’t even know I was going until I found myself pedaling in what I knew to be the general direction of the city.
How did I ever get there? The distance must have been at least twenty miles. I knew neither the time nor the exact location of the event. How often did I stop for help? I recall only one face: a grizzled old man, skin so black it was almost blue, missing front teeth, a crusty fingernail pointing. And, as I rode off, his voice croaking: “You be careful!”
As I drew closer, I began to construct a picture of the funeral and my place in it. I was nagged by a singular problem: How would I see over the crowd of mourners surrounding the grave site? I was a kid from Two Mills, white, not related, not a neighbor. I had no standing, no reason to worm my way to the front ranks or to be welcomed at all. And then a brilliant solution: a tree! The graveyard would have a tree. A climbable tree. Possibly mulberry. Near the open grave. I would look down from there. Best seat in the house!
Spurred by my plan, I pedaled harder. I found the church. A lady in an office said the burial was “across the street, but—”
I raced out the door, across the street. Gravestones poked above the ground, but nothing else conformed to my picture. No trees. No crowd. Unlike the St. John’s cemetery next to the prison, there was no grass, as if death were the only crop that would grow. The sky was gray.
Five figures stood in a far corner. As I approached, walking my bike, one of them left the others and came past me: black suit, black skin, white collar, a nod, a smile. The minister. A couple of tire turns closer, I saw that two of the remaining figures stood back from the dark rectangle in the earth, casually postured, shovels to the ground like third legs: the gravediggers. The other two were women, in black, like the minister. One no doubt was the sister. They stood perilously close to the hole.
Warily I walked my bike forward. Obviously I was late. The graveside service had just ended. No one had come to mourn but the two women in black. They did not speak. They did not move. Curiously, to me, they were looking outward, into the city, not down into the dark hole. The soft tick of my bicycle wheels sounded like a clock in an empty house. I stopped. All my chummy hours with Boo Boo in the Quiet Room suddenly seemed to count for nothing. I was intruding. I heard a quick scratch: a gravedigger had struck a match, lit a cigarette.
A sudden breeze on my face. The day was getting darker. A trick of the wind, no doubt, but I thought I caught a whiff of strawberries. As quietly as I could, I turned my bike around and walked back out through the tombstones. I never got close enough to the hole to see the casket.
I pedaled home through a slurry of haunting images: a careening milk truck…four cherries half buried in whipped cream…Andrew on my bike between my arms…Boo Boo’s laughter…Annamarie Pinto’s mother checking out groceries at Fiore’s Market…my mother’s shoe…Boo Boo’s flashing red fingernails. I must have pedaled forty miles to cover the twenty. By the time I lugged my bike into Reception, Mrs. Butterfield was gone for the day. Al the night guard sat at her desk. Three other guards stood in a group. They all glanced at me, surprised, then toward the apartment. My father stood halfway up the stairs. “Where were you?” he snapped.
I parked my bike behind the brass spittoon. “Boo Boo’s funeral,” I said.
My father’s face softened. I could almost hear his undelivered lecture whistle from the room.
“It’s dark,” he said as I approached him on the stairs. He took off my baseball cap. He touched my hair, my shoulder. “You’re soaked.”
This was news to me. Apparently I had pedaled home in rain.
It must have been a Monday, as Carl’s weekly pie sat whole and unsliced on the kitchen table. My pie knife and a plate lay beside it.
Eloda was at the gas oven, turning a dial. I wondered what she was doing there. She was usually back in her cell by seven o’clock.
“I’m not hungry,” I told her.
She turned and gave me a look. “You’re soaked,” she said.
“No kidding,” I said.
Next thing I knew she was yanking my clothes off in the kitchen, muttering about kids this and kids that. I was an almost-thirteen-year-old girl, but I didn’t mind. I was numb to everything. She dried me off with dish towels and swaddled me in my father’s chocolate-brown terry-cloth bathrobe.
That’s the last thing I remember of what one would normally call that day. The partitions of my world had already collapsed. If I had been in a prison of my own before, I was in solitary now. There are no days of the week in solitary, no neat squares on a calendar. There is no dawn. No weather. No window. There is no that, no then. Only this. Only now. Only light and dark. And even the light is dark.
I must have gone to bed. I suppose I slept. But all I recall is the terry cloth heaping so cozy about my ears—so unspeakably unlike the brown robe of earth enfolding Boo Boo—and now I am sitting on the high counter stool and Eloda is behind me with comb and rubber band, so it must be another day. I’ve just polished off a cup of coffee. Nobody, not even my own personal warden, will deny me any request at this time. And now, incited by the caffeine, no doubt, I’m gabbing away, a regular Chatty Cathy.
I’m telling Eloda about the funeral. I’m telling her about my hours with Boo Boo. About Boo Boo’s youth in the southern swamplands and her dream of a house by bright water and a life with Delancy and a bunch of kids. About her love of Scooper Dooper banana splits and my appointment as proxy and our sweet-potato-pie deal. And Eloda behind me is combing and listening, and now she is saying, “There’s no Delancy.”
“Huh?” I say. I’m already floundering, so my bewilderment is merely more of the same.
She repeats: “There’s no Delancy, Miss Cammie. I’m sorry. There never was.”
I turn so quickly that her hand accidentally yanks my pigstub. “She met him at the park at the courthouse,” I tell her. “On the bench by the cannon. He had a sandwich. She said, ‘Liverwurst.’ And ‘onion.’ He said, ‘What a nose!’ He works at Recorder of Deeds but the ugly lady won’t admit it.” I am strident. I am adamant. I know a thing or two about evidence.
I see the sad, disappointed smile, the smile grown-ups use when they have to tell a happy kid or a know-it-all kid, Sorry, but you’re wrong. “She made it all up,” she says. I gape at her, at the sad smile. I want to punch it.
“You’re lying!” I scream, and run from the house.