Chapter Excerpt

1

A crowd had gathered around Mrs. Winter. The commotion at the graveside vibrated with suppressed hilarity. Me, I wasn't able to keep properly solemn. When my shoulders had started shaking with silent laughter, I'd ducked behind the plain pine coffin still on its stand outside the grave.

I bit my lips to keep the giggles in, and peeked around the coffin to watch the goings-on.

Mrs. Winter had given up the attempt to discreetly pull her bloomers back up. Through the milling legs of the mourners, I could see her trying desperately instead to kick off the pale pink nylon that had slithered down from her haunches and snagged around her ankles.

Her kick sent a tiny flash of gold skittering across the cemetery lawn to land near me. I glanced down. I picked up the small tangle of gold-coloured wire and put it in my jacket pocket for later. Right now, I had some high drama to watch.

Pastor Paul, ever helpful, bent to the ground at Mrs. Winter's feet and reached for his parishioner's panties. Lord help me Jesus, he was really going to pick them up! But he drew his fingers back. He looked mortified. Maybe he was thinking how the panties had recently been snugged up to Mrs. Winter's naked flesh. I thought my belly was going to bust, I was trying so hard not to laugh aloud. I bet you Dadda would have laughed with me, if he wasn't in that coffin right now.

Mrs. Winter got the tip of one of her pumps caught in the froth of pink nylon. She cheeped in dismay and fell heavily to the ground. Lawdamercy! I bent right over, shaking with laughter, trying to not pee myself from it.

Pastor Paul and Mrs. Winter's son Leroy were pulling on her arms now, trying to get her off the ground. "Oh, Dadda, oh," I whispered through my giggles. "Wherever you are, I hope you seeing this." I held my belly and wept tears of mirth. Serve the old bat right for insulting me like that. Not a day went by at work that she didn't find some sly way to sink in the knife. She had to do the same thing at my father's funeral, too?

Mrs. Winter was halfway up. She had one arm hooked around Leroy's neck, and Pastor Paul was pushing her from behind. A few of the mourners asked her if she was all right. "Oh, migod," was all she said; "oh, migod." My laughter was edging up on hysteria. Too much; death and mirth all at once. I rested my hands on my knees and took little panting breaths to calm myself. I couldn't hide behind the coffin forever.

At least the tingling in my hand had stopped. A few minutes earlier, standing at the open grave, I'd suddenly felt too warm, and my hand had gotten pins and needles.

I took the scrap of wire out of my pocket. It had been crushed flat. I pulled on the loops of wire until something of its original shape began to emerge. I had a good look at it, and gasped.

I held the pin up against the sunlight. It caught a spark of light, threw blades of sunshine at my eyes. It had gotten warped over the years, forced into service to hold up Mrs. Winter's loose drawers. It used to be a decorative pin for wearing on a blouse, its gold wire looped in the shape of an ornate C, T, and L: Chastity Theresa Lambkin. My girlhood name. Mumma'd given me that pin for my eighth birthday. Years ago, after they'd declared Mumma dead and we'd had the memorial service for her, little Chastity-girl me had noticed it missing. And missing it had stayed; no time to look for it in all the commotion of the hearing, of moving to my aunt and uncle's, and the children at school whispering to each other whenever they saw me.

Where in blazes Mrs. Winter had found my pin?

"Mum? What's going on?"

Ife was standing there, holding young Stanley's hand. Ife's black dress hung off her shoulders, its hem crooked.

Stanley gave me a shy little wave.

Ife had gotten the best bits of me and her father combined: the glow of his perfect dark brown skin; his lips, the way they peaked in the middle when he smiled. My dimples, my well-shaped legs. She was plump, like all the women in our family, but that never stopped a West Indian man yet. Not a real man, anyway. If I could just get her to wear clothes that suited her!

Not my Ife. She covered up her charms with baggy, ankle-length dresses in unhelpful colours, slouched around in rubber flipflops or those horrible wide-toed cork sandals from abroad. Been so long since I'd seen her legs, she might as well not have any.

Nothing could hide that smile, though. She turned it on me now, and even though it was an uncertain smile today, it made my world a little bit brighter.

But I firmly squashed the joy at seeing her sweet face, made mine sour. I tucked the warped pin back into my pocket and turned to my daughter Ifeoma, to whom I wasn't speaking. Well, not really speaking. I mean, I would say 'morning and so, you know, but nothing more until she took back that awful thing she'd called me.

"Mrs. Winter tripped," I told her as I hugged her. "And you know I wish you wouldn't call me #Mum' like that." Using the hug for cover, I stroked her back. No bra again. That child had no respect for the dead. And no fashion sense either; that dress! My seventies throwback hippie girl child. At least she wasn't wearing sandals and socks today, but proper high heels.

"You're my mother," Ife murmured into our hug. "It's not respectful for me to call you #Calamity,' like . . . like . . ."

I pulled back and glared at Ifeoma. "Like what? You'd best mind yourself with me. You know I'm vex with you already, after last night."

Ife pressed her lips together. She used to do that as a little girl when she didn't want to eat her greens. ". . . like you're my sister," she said quietly.

And just so, she squashed my heart like you crush a piece of paper into a ball you're going to throw in the trash. I turned my face from her.

Stanley stood at the lip of the open grave, peering in. He pulled at his collar. This might be the first time in his nine years that he was wearing a suit.

"You're my mother," Ife said. "Why I can't just call you #Mummy'?"

Last night, she'd called me a "matriarch." Like I was some wrinkled, prune-faced dowager wearing a hairnet and clothes thirty years out of fashion.

Mrs. Winter was standing all the way up now. She was favouring one ankle. She still had one arm wrapped around Leroy's neck. The other was around Pastor Paul's. Mrs. Saranta was fanning her face with a prayer book. One of the ushers, a long, skinny young man with big eyes and hands like shovels, had picked Mrs. Winter's tiger-print handbag up off the grass and was collecting all the things that had spilled out of it.

We used to be as close as sisters, Ife and I. The night I took her out to celebrate her twenty-first birthday with her first legal drink, the bartender had asked us both if we were of drinking age. And we'd laughed, and flirted with him the whole evening. I didn't tell him she was my daughter until after I took him home that night and made him call out for God in my bed.

But now I wasn't just old; I was fully an orphan, too, instead of the half of one I had been for so many decades. And finally, the tears came. "He's gone, Ife. Dadda's gone."

Ife took me into her arms again. "Ssh, it's all right." If she'd been irritated with me before, there was no sign of it now. For all I'd tried to teach her, she'd never learned how to hold a grudge good and hard, like a shield.

I let myself sob into her neck for a while. My breath rushed and halted.

Mrs. Winter said, quite firmly, "I want to go home." Good. Interfering woman was probably too shamed to stay after half the town had seen her smalls fall off. Why she had to come today? Bad enough I had to endure her at work. Mrs. Winter thought it was her job to supervise me into an early grave.

Pastor Paul offered to have one of the ushers help Leroy walk her to her car. But no, she wanted the pastor. He gazed around until he spotted me. He gave an apologetic shrug, held up five fingers, and mouthed, Five minutes? I nodded. The three of them hobbled off towards the parking lot. Now our funeral party could recover some of its dignity. What a pity you all alone in this time of trial, child. Chuh. Never mind her ; I'd rather fuck the horse she rode in on.

But that was no proper way to be thinking at my father's funeral.

"You feeling better now, Mum?"

"Right as rain. But I wish you'd worn something a little more tailored, you know?"

Ife smiled at me, tentatively. "This is my best black dress," she said. "It's the one I wear when I want to impress. Stanley, come away from there. You might fall in."

"I won't fall," Stanley replied.

"Come over here, I said."

He did. I wouldn't let Ife change the subject, though. I knew her tricks better than she knew them herself. "That dress is black crushed gauze, my darling. You look like a big turkey buzzard flapping through the air."

Ife's smile hardened like ice. "So we're going to talk about my looks again?"

I took her face in both my hands. "Your looks are fine. Why you always so worried about looks? You only need to pretty yourself up a little bit." I don't know where Ife got her meek nature from. Not from me. "I keep telling you, Ife; you should have more self-confidence. Shorten the skirts a bit, wear some prettier colours. And show a little bosom. We Lambkin women have more than enough to display."

Ife glared. "Clifton likes me this way. You're so old-fashioned, Mummy."

God, "Mummy" was even worse than "Mum." And since when was I "old-fashioned"? In high school, the other girls used to call my fashion sense scandalous, and I'd loved scandalizing them.

I could see Pastor Paul hurrying back from the parking lot. I took Stanley's hand. "Come and say goodbye to Dadda," I told him. The three of us moved closer to the rest of the funeral party. A trim, dark man, maybe sixtyish, made room for us. Peggy Bruce, who had arrived late, nodded a greeting. Even when we were in school, Peggy had always been late. "We going to start again soon," I said to the mourners. "Pastor Paul on his way back."

"Did Michael come?" Ife asked in a whisper.

"Who?" I whispered back.

Now Ife's eyes had the glint of obsidian. "Michael," she said, a little louder. "My father." John Antoni peered at us, hungry for gossip.

"Hush," I said under my breath.

A kiskedee bird zipped by overhead, laughing its high, piping chuckle at me before flying into the branches of one of the frangipani trees in the cemetery.

Ife said, "I thought you were taking care of the invitations! How could you just not tell him that his own father-in-law was dead?"

I lifted my chin. "Dadda was never Michael's father-in-law." Tears that had been on the verge of brimming tipped back into the bowls of my eyes again. The eye water was cold.

"Gran?" said Stanley. "I mean, Calamity?"

Lovely boy. I hunkered down to his eye level, balancing on the spikes of my black stiletto pumps. Huh. "Matriarch." Could a matriarch do that? "And what can I do for you, my handsome boy?"

Stanley ran into my arms. He was all woodknuckle knees and awkwardness, his hair trimmed short, with a W pattern buzzed into the back and sides. His father Clifton had told me it had something to do with American wrestling on the tv. Stanley and I could chat for hours, about school and comics and food. His mind was like a new country; always something fascinating around the next bend. I didn't see him as often as I liked. Seemed he always had homework to do on the weekend, or soccer practice. Ife and Clifton kept him busy.

"Does Great-Grandpa look scary?" Stanley asked.

"You can't even see him," said Ifeoma, butting in. "The casket is closed. Isn't it, Mum?"

I inhaled the child's pre-adolescent smell of spit and sweat. "Yes, my love," I said to him. "It's closed."

Stanley sighed. He looked disappointed. "But I wanted to see," he said. "Godfrey Mordecai at school said that Great- Grandpa would be a skellington, and he would be scary, and I would be frightened. I wouldn't be frightened. I want to see, Gran. I want to see a real live skellington."

" #Skeleton,' dear." I felt a smile blooming on my lips. A live skeleton. Stanley was a little unclear on the concept. "Stanley, you have a curious mind. This is how I know you're my blood." I rose, smoothed my skirt down, and took his hand. Pastor Paul was scurrying our way. I told Stanley, "Let's see if we can get the lid on the casket raised for you." He grinned up at me, and we went to meet the pastor halfway. I took care to mind my ankles in the wobbly stilettos. They weren't made to walk on grass.

Ife caught up with us. "Mum? Don't do anything to frighten Stanley, please? He might have nightmares. Mum?"

What a way she overprotected that child!

"Mistress Lambkin," said Pastor Paul. He was puffing from the exertion. "So sorry for the interruption. Shall we, ahm, continue with the proceedings now?"

He was another one who would never call me "Calamity," no matter how much I asked him to. But he'd picked the wrong day to cross me. I nodded at him, all meekness. "Yes, thank you, Egbert," I said in a clear, carrying voice.

Stanley giggled. A man standing close to us hid his smile behind a cough. Egbert glanced around. Oh, yes; plenty of people had heard me. If he hated his bloody name so much, why he didn't just change it? I had changed mine.

Ifeoma snickered, flicked me an amused glance. Now, that was my girl; the one I'd raised. It was the same grin she'd given me that day in the grocery store, all those years ago.

I had just started working at the library. My first paycheque wouldn't come for another month. I'd been feeding myself and little Ife on macaroni and cheese, and we'd run out of cheese. How old would she have been then? About seven, I think. We were in the cold foods aisle. I was trying to choose between eggs and a block of cheese. I could get only one of them. I was trying not to look at the packets of chicken, of stewing beef, of goat meat. I couldn't tell how long it had been since we'd had meat. Ifeoma loved roasted chicken legs. Suddenly my crazy girl child took it into her head to start singing "Little Sally Water" at the top of her considerable lungs, complete with the moves. I was about to scold her when I realised that people were looking at her, not me.

"Rise, Sally, RISE!" Ifeoma had yelled, leaping up from the ground, "and dry your weeping eyes . . ."

Quickly, while she was turning to the east, the west, and to the one she loved the best, I'd slipped two packets of chicken legs and one of stewing goat into the big pockets of my dirndl skirt. With all the gathered material in that skirt, nobody would notice the lumps. Only then did I order Ife to stop making so much commotion. And damned if the child didn't straighten up immediately, smooth her dress down, and come and pat one of my pockets! And such a conspiring grin on her face! The little devil had been providing distraction so I could feed us both. I missed that Ife. The sober, responsible one standing beside me at the cemetery now was no fun at all.

Egbert took a solemn few steps back to the graveside. "Everyone, please gather round," he said.

Ife, Stanley, and I moved to stand beside him. I bent and whispered to Stanley, "Don't worry, I didn't forget. We just have to finish this part first."

He gave an eager nod. Ifeoma said nothing, but she made a sour face. I composed myself for the rest of the funeral.

"Dearly beloved," said Pastor Paul, "James Allan Lambkin has come to the end of his life on this earth, and the beginning of his life with you. We therefore commit his body to the ground."

When I was nine, Dadda had shown me how to fish. But for months he wouldn't let me bait the hook myself. He did it for me, because he was afraid I would jook my fingers.

"Earth to earth," said Pastor Paul.

When I was twelve and woke up one morning to bloodstained sheets and my first period, Dadda ran to the store and brought back a big shopping bag with pads in all different shapes and sizes. He stood outside the closed bathroom door and called out instructions to me for how to put them on.

Ifeoma sniffed and wiped her eyes. Stanley's bottom lip was trembling. Damn, now I was tearing up, too.

"Ashes to ashes, dust to dust."

When I was thirteen and had passed my entrance exams to get into high school, Dadda took me to the big island to celebrate. We went to a fancy restaurant. He bought me ice cream and cake, and drank a toast to me with his glass of sorrel drink.

"In the sure and certain hope of the Resurrection to eternal life."

When I was fifteen, I told Dadda that I was four months pregnant. He raged through the house for two hours, calling me nasty names and demanding to know who'd done it. I wouldn't tell him. He stopped talking to me. He wouldn't eat when I cooked. On the third day he ransacked my room and threw away all my makeup and nice clothes. On the fourth day I packed a small bag and moved out. Went to the big island and knocked on the door of Dadda's sister Aunt Pearl and her husband Edward. Auntie Pearl let me know that I had shamed the whole family, but she and Uncle Edward gave me a roof and fed me, and they didn't lecture me too often. I got a part-time job as a page in the library. Until my belly got too big for it, I worked all the hours they would give me, saved my money. It was Auntie who was with me the day I had Ifeoma. Auntie, and Michael.

I dashed my eyes dry. Old brute. He'd had his ways, but if he thought I was going to get sentimental about him now that he was dead, he was sorely mistaken.

"Amen."

"Amen," responded everyone at the grave site.

Pastor Paul turned to me and Ifeoma. "Now we're going to lower the coffin into the grave," he said. The word "grave" applied to my father was a shock. I felt it, like a blow over my heart. Dadda was in that box, and now they were going to cover him with dirt. I opened my mouth, but I couldn't make words come out.

"That's fine," said Ifeoma to the pastor. "Let's just do that."

Stanley was tugging urgently at my wrist. I patted his hand to let him know I understood. "We have a request first, Egbert," I said to the pastor.

"Yes, Miss Lambki . . . Calamity?"

Good. He'd managed to force it out. "Pastor Paul," I said as his reward—when the puppy obeys, you give it a treat—"can we open the coffin, please? I want to see Dadda's face." My voice broke on the last word.

"Of course, Mistress . . . Calamity; of course."

"Oh, dear," murmured Ifeoma. She pulled Stanley to her, wiped his face with the corner of her dress. He squirmed. She rummaged around in her handbag; one of those handwoven things made of jute or hay or something ecological of the sort. I gave Stanley a shaky wink. He looked scared and excited all at once.

"Let me give you your asthma medicine first," said Ife.

"I don't want it!" he replied, trying to wrench himself out of her hands. "It tastes like ass!"

I snorted, pretended I was blowing my nose.

"Stanley!" said Ife. She gave Stanley's shoulder a little shake. "You have some respect for the dead!"

Fine thing for her to say, Ms. Braless. Stanley scowled at her, then looked down at the ground. I whispered to Ifeoma, "It tastes like—"

"Not so loud!" she muttered. "He hears these things on American television."

I chuckled.

Pastor Paul called over the usher with the big hands, whispered to him. The usher nodded and got one of the others to help him slide back one corner of the coffin lid a little.

"Are you sure this is a good idea?" Ife asked.

"Yes, darling. Stanley, are you ready?"

Stanley started to shake his head no. Turned it into an uncertain nod.

"Good boy. Never back down, you hear me? No matter what people say to you, always hold your spine straight and look them square in their eye. You understand me?"

"Yes," he said in a small voice. He was staring at the casket.

I hoisted him up onto my hip and walked to the head of the coffin. Together, we looked inside.

It took a while to make out Dadda's wizened face in the darkness of the coffin.

"What you think, Stanley?"

"He's all skinny."

"It's true. Smoking isn't good for you."

"And he's wrinkly."

"Yes. He didn't have a whole lot of flesh left on him. But he was still your great-grandpa."

"And he's not a skellington," the boy said in a rush, "and Grandma?"

God, I hated when he called me that. "Yes, dear?"

"Why does he got makeup on his cheeks?"

Ifeoma answered, "They did that at the funeral home, to make him look more natural. Don't you think he looks natural, Stan-Stan?"

"No," said the precious boy. Oh, babes and sucklings. "I wanted to see a skellington. He just looks funny."

"Stanley!" said Ife. "Manners!"

"Never mind, Stanley," I said. "I agree with you. He just looks funny. You want to get down now?"

"Yes, Grandm—"

"Calamity."

"Yes, Calamity."

I sighed as I put Stanley to stand beside me. Ca-lam-i-ty. Easy to say. Just four small syllables, and not even so different from my childhood name. Just more truthful.

I nodded at the ushers. They put the lid back and commenced to lowering the coffin. It was slung into some kind of fantastic contraption, a scaffolding of metal and straps, by which they winched it down. Two years I'd been the one supporting Dadda's dying weight. Now that he had turned to earth, he was too heavy for me. This metal cradle would have to do it.

We watched the coffin sink smoothly into the grave. People started throwing in wreaths and flowers. The man who had been standing close by turned to me. "I'm Gene Meeks," he said.

"Pleased to meet you." He wasn't bad-looking, in a "gruff black actor who always plays the honourable old-school army officer" kind of way. A little too lean on the bone for my liking.

"You know your father used to tutor me, yes?" he said. "You were just a girl then. Maybe fourteen."

I stared into his face, trying to subtract the years from it. "Yes, you look familiar."

"Mr. Lambkin was the only reason I got into college. My science subjects, you know? I graduated secondary school with high honours because of him. He was like a second father to me."

"That must have been nice." After I left home, Dadda never once asked after me, not even when Auntie told him that I had had the baby. He didn't meet Ifeoma until she was four years old.

The ushers escorted us to the funeral home's reception parlour. Pastor Paul installed me in the only armchair; everyone else had to make do with the flimsy stacking chairs. Ife gave Stanley her car keys so that he could get his precious glider and play with it outside.

The food that people had brought to share was already on the tables. The covers and lids came off, the mourners began to help themselves, and I spent the next hour enduring the slow, polite torture of the receiving line. Over by the decrepit piano, two cousins of Dadda's I didn't recognise—now, those were old women—belted out hymns while endless people shook my hand, told me how well they'd known my father, how much he'd done for them, how much they'd loved him. I recognized some of the ones who'd come to visit Dadda while I was looking after him. The rest were a blur. I smiled and said thank you until my teeth ached. Gene and Ife brought me some refreshment: a slice of the black cake I'd made, and in a little plastic cup, some fluorescent pink punch I hadn't. I sipped it. My left eye spasmed against the sour-sweet chemical taste. "Jesus," I said. "Who bring this?"

"Me," answered Gene. "You don't like it?"

He looked like somebody had kicked his puppy. I resigned myself and took a big gulp of the drink. I swallowed hard. "It's wonderful," I told him. "Just what I needed."

He beamed and patted my hand. I found myself gripping his hand back like a lifeline. I squeezed my eyes shut to blink back the sudden tears. Opened them again. With a sad smile, Gene nodded, gave my hand a firm squeeze. We stayed like that for a second or two. "You want me bring you some more?" he asked.

I released my hold. "Of the drink? Oh, no. That was quite enough."

Mrs. Soledad stepped between us, neatly eclipsing Gene. For a little old woman, she knew how to take up space. She hugged me. "He on the next leg of the journey now," she said. "One day you and he will catch up."

I murmured a thank you. I didn't know how else to respond. She cotched herself on the padded arm of my chair. "Don't worry," she said, seeing me get up to offer her my chair. "This suit me better."

Mrs. Soledad had been Dadda's neighbour. Her family had been salt farmers on Dolorosse since way back. She wouldn't tell anyone her age. Her standard answer was "Somewhere between sixty and #oh God.' " She used to sit with Dadda when I was at work.

"I guess I won't be coming by the house so much any more."

"I guess so."

"You know what you going to do yet?"

I shook my head.

Mrs. Soledad went to the big island only when she absolutely had to. She had a quarter-acre salt pond on her property where she still farmed solar salt, the way she and her husband and their families used to do. No way they could compete with the Gilmor Saline factory, but Mrs. Soledad sent her specialty salts to big island on the workers' co-op boat every few weeks, to be sold in the Cayaba tourist market. She and Mr. Soledad had sent their son to university on salt—first one in both their families to get a degree—and she wasn't going stop now. For food, she phoned her order in to Boulton's grocery on the big island and paid on her credit card. The grocery delivered the food in boxes to the waterbus. She would put on some of her dead husband's working clothes, meet the waterbus at the Dolorosse docks, pile everything into a wheelbarrow, and haul it up to her house. If you offered to help her with it, she would blister your ears for you with some choice swear words. Dadda once joked that if her bark was this bad, he never wanted to feel her bite. And she was hale. Hiked from one end of Bless#e to the other every day, for exercise.

But right now, she simply sat beside me, in silence. The most settling silence I'd had all day. This was a side of her I hadn't seen before. Hell, I'd never seen her in a dress before. In a little bit, my shoulders eased down from around my ears. I took a deep breath. "Nice hat," I said. "Impressive."

Mrs. Soledad preened. Today's confection was a smart little black pillbox with a huge peacock feather thrust through it and curling around the nape of her neck. The feather started off black at its base, and prismed to iridescent greens and purples at its tip. A scrunched half-veil in black netting completed the look.

"You like it?" she asked.

"It suits you." I hoped she wouldn't notice that I wasn't exactly answering her question. Where was Gene? I tried not to make it too obvious I was looking around for him.

Mrs. Soledad never went without a hat. "Protecting my head from the cancers," she would say, pointing at the sun. I'd never seen her wear the same hat twice, and she liked them oldfashioned, gaudy, and extravagant. As far as Mrs. Soledad was concerned, every day was an Easter parade. She was Hindu, but that was just a minor detail.

"Well," she said, easing her feet down to the floor again, "I just see somebody bring out the white rum. I going over there. It's not a funeral if you don't knock back a dram or two. To honour the dead, you know?" Off she went, before I could thank her for everything she had done for Dadda and me.

Gene came by. He had a plastic cup in either hand. He held one out to me.

"I don't want any more," I said.

He nodded. "I finally tasted it; the punch, I mean. I didn't taste it when I made it. It was nasty! I just poured the rest of it down the drain."

That got a little laugh from me. "Then what is this?" I took the cup, looked inside. Water? I sniffed it, and gasped as the fumes went up my nose.

"High wine," Gene replied. Overproof rum. He poured a little of his on the floor in libation. "Spirits for the spirits."

I copied him, then we each knocked back the remaining rum in our cups.

I coughed. "Thank you," I rasped.

"Your father was my hero," he said.

"Mmm."

"I never believed the people who said it's he who did it. Not Mr. Lambkin. He wasn't like that."

Suddenly I felt ill. Feverish. The world started to recede. I grabbed for the arm of the chair. Damn. Not this again.

There was a crash of breaking crockery. It startled me back into myself. I opened my eyes. At my feet lay the remains of a blue and white plate. Somebody must have dropped one of the dishes they'd brought to the potluck. Pastor Paul shooed people away from the shards. He shouted, "Whose plate is this?" No one answered. One of the singing cousins scurried to find a broom.

"Hello, Mother." My son-in-law Clifton leaned over and gave me a peck on the cheek. "Sorry to take so long. My plane was delayed." He peered into my face. "You all right?"

"I think I going to be sick."

Clifton leapt right into action. He helped me up out of the armchair, put an arm around my shoulders. I was tottery on my stilettos. "She had a hard day," he said to Gene. "She need to rest."

"Of course, of course." He backed away.

In two-twos, Clifton had made apologies to Pastor Paul for me, collected Ife and Stanley, and had gotten us out the door.

I stopped when we were outside the building. The afternoon sun beat down on my shoulders, but it didn't stifle me like inside the funeral home. I took a deep breath of air that wasn't buzzing with whispered condolences.

"How you feeling?" asked Ifeoma. She looked worried. Stanley too.

"Never better. I just needed to get out of there."

"Gene was trying to sweet-talk her," Clifton told Ife. "At Mr. Lambkin's funeral!"

"It wasn't like that." I made a mental note to check in with the doctor about those bloody spells. That was the fifth or sixth one. "I'm okay to walk on my own now. Let's just go."

Clifton took his supporting arm from around me, and we all headed for the parking lot. Stanley was concentrating on the controls of his glider, making it fly on ahead of us. He tripped, but Clifton caught him by the back of his suit jacket before he fell. "Bring that thing down and stop playing with it," he ordered. "Ife, how you could let him bring a toy to a funeral?"

"It's not a toy!" said Stanley.

"He didn't have it during the funeral," Ife responded mildly.

"I sent him outside to play during the reception. He would have died of boredom in there."

I had it. "Willow Tree."

Ife looked confused. "What?"

"That plate that dropped and broke. It was the Willow Tree china pattern. I used to have one like it."

"Let us take you home, nuh?" Clifton said. "Ife could drive your car. Me and Stanley will follow in ours."

"No, no. Don't go to all that trouble. I'm fine. Fresh as a daisy in spring!" I threaded my way through the cars in the lot. The tarmac was softening in the heat. If I ruined my stilettos, I was going to blister Egbert Paul's ears for him.

"You sure you don't want us to drive you?" Ife asked again.

"I don't need minding. The matriarch don't need a full-time nurse yet." I was smiling, but the words came out harsher than I meant them.

"Mummy, please stop it. You know I didn't mean it that way. I just meant that you were a grandmother. In some cultures, grandmothers are honoured."

"And in all cultures, grandmothers are old," I snapped. Damn. Temper again. We were at Victoria, my red rattletrap of an Austin Mini car. I hugged Ife by way of apology. "Really. I'm okay."

Nobody would do me a favour and steal that car. The left back window was brown paper covered with plastic wrap and held on with masking tape. A crack in the front windshield had long since walked its way from the bottom to the top of the glass. I wasn't even going to ask the mechanic how much it would cost to replace the windshield. I still hadn't finished paying him for when he'd fixed my brakes last year.

Clifton was frowning at Victoria. "You should get that muffler fixed, you know, Mother. It hanging a little low."

Hanging low? Rusting away and falling off was more like it. I got my keys out of my purse, opened the car door so it could cool inside a bit before I put my behind on that hot seat. I rubbed my itchy hand.

"Your hand hurting?" asked Stanley.

I realised I had been rubbing that hand since we left the funeral home. "No," I answered. "Allergy, maybe. Probably Gene's punch."

Stanley made a "yuck" face.

I laughed. "I see you tried it, too." I did that little dance you had to do to get into a car wearing a pencil skirt: sit sideways on the seat first, with your legs outside the car; then knees and toes together, lift the feet into the car, swivel till you're facing the steering wheel. Clifton closed the door after me. Such a gentleman.

I rolled down the window. It only stuck once. "I going straight home. Promise."

"You have to work on Monday?" Ife asked.

"Yeah. Shit."

"Grandma said #shit'!" burbled Stanley.

"Stanley, you will not use such language," his mother told him.

"They gave me a week's bereavement leave," I said. "I wish it was a year."

"Maybe Mrs. Winter will have to be off work till her ankle get better," said Ife.

I rolled my eyes to the sky. "Please God."

"Grandma can say #shit,' " muttered Stanley. He crossed his arms, pushed his lips out in a sulk.

"Grandma's a big old woman," Clifton told him. "She can say what she wants."

"I am not old!" I started the car over his apologies. Old. I called out the car window, "Men your age still soo-sooing me in the street." I tried to remember the last time anyone had wolfwhistled me. Chuh. Probably wasn't so long ago.

The engine switched over to idle. "All right," I said to them. "The old witch—excuse me, the old matriarch—is returning to her cottage in the woods now. She's going to talk to her mongoose familiar and brew up some spells."

"Spells?" Stanley looked delighted.

"Oh, yes," I said. "Snips and snails and puppy dogs' tails—covered in chocolate."

His mouth fell open.

I put the car in gear. As they walked away, I saw Ifeoma put one arm around Clifton. Stanley took her free hand.

Damned punch was bitter in the back of my throat.

I was at the exit to the parking lot when I heard a car horn blowing at me. I stopped. A beige sedan pulled up alongside me. Gene got out and came to my window. "I think I upset you in

there just now," he said. "I'm sorry."

"Don't fret," I replied. "Wasn't you. It's just the strain of . . . everything." Like waking up four mornings ago to find that Dadda had died in the night. The arrangements. Putting on a good face. I was tired like dog, the little bit of arthritis in my left knee aching. I couldn't wait to get home to the peace and quiet. No more Dadda and his secrets. Just me in the empty, lonely house.

"You could do me a favour, though," I said to Gene.

"Anything."

"I'm feeling little bit shaky. You could shadow me in your car? Just until the ferry dock? I want to be sure I get to the waterbus all right."

He nodded. "I'm right behind you."

Copyright © 2007 by Nalo Hopkinson