I wonder if angels can be bribed into listening. Even if they can, I don’t think a handful of quarters are going to hold them over for the eternity of senseless gabbing Great Aunt Muriel's most recent and unexpected, trip will bring.
I'm thinking about all the quarters Aunt Muriel gave me, as I pick cat hair off my black dress. The cat was actually Aunt Muriel’s. It’s old and lanky, and has a purr like a broken airplane motor, but it’s a sweet cat. My parents had a huge fit over the fact that we inherited him, complaining that we hadn’t spent all those Christmases at her unkempt house for a cat. The house really was rough around the edges though, with all these intimidating artifacts, and the electricity only working in the downstairs of the house. One of the artifacts was a grotesque Cuban bust of a man, except Aunt Muriel had added one of those George Washington wigs on top of it. I only noticed the huge crack down the forehead because one time Aunt Muriel had pulled me into the living room and sat me on the couch, (while leaving a trail of spilled wine all along the way) patting it there as if to smooth out its defect. She had sat on the coffee table and handed me a Ziploc baggie full of quarters, some of which were Canadian (which I thought was a rip off until i made her promise that if I saved them, she’d take me to Canada some day to spend them) and right next to her on the coffee table was the bust of the Cuban man, named Pelirrojo, which is Spanish for red head. She patted his face, touching every Cuban feature, and I pretended as always to listen to her drunken tale. It’s rude not to do what you’re paid to do.
I'm thinking about all the quarters Aunt Muriel gave me, as I pick cat hair off my black dress. The cat was actually Aunt Muriel’s. It’s old and lanky, and has a purr like a broken airplane motor, but it’s a sweet cat. My parents had a huge fit over the fact that we inherited him, complaining that we hadn’t spent all those Christmases at her unkempt house for a cat. The house really was rough around the edges though, with all these intimidating artifacts, and the electricity only working in the downstairs of the house. One of the artifacts was a grotesque Cuban bust of a man, except Aunt Muriel had added one of those George Washington wigs on top of it. I only noticed the huge crack down the forehead because one time Aunt Muriel had pulled me into the living room and sat me on the couch, (while leaving a trail of spilled wine all along the way) patting it there as if to smooth out its defect. She had sat on the coffee table and handed me a Ziploc baggie full of quarters, some of which were Canadian (which I thought was a rip off until i made her promise that if I saved them, she’d take me to Canada some day to spend them) and right next to her on the coffee table was the bust of the Cuban man, named Pelirrojo, which is Spanish for red head. She patted his face, touching every Cuban feature, and I pretended as always to listen to her drunken tale. It’s rude not to do what you’re paid to do.
I have no idea why the bust was even there in the first place. Aunt Muriel’s father’s brother’s cousin emigrated here from Russia. We all have either really dark hair, and dark eyes or really light hair and light eyes, which is strange because blonde hair and blue eyes are both recessive traits, and how can there be people with all recessive traits and people with all dominant traits in the same family? I guess it’s just like how dad’s mom’s cousin is related to me but their sister isn't, because of all the family divorces. None of that mattered to Aunt Muriel though. All that really mattered was that someone was there on the holidays to pour her wine and make sure she didn’t fall down the stairs when she had too many drinks. We only went to her house because she was outstandingly rich and my parents wanted her inheritance when she died, which ended up to be much less substantial then they expected I guess, and which brings me back to the cat. All the same, we all are all in the car with our black dresses and suits, driving to St. Christopher’s Church for beloved Aunt Muriel’s funeral.
When we pull up to the chapel at last, there are a lot of cars in the parking lot.
When we pull up to the chapel at last, there are a lot of cars in the parking lot.
“They do know she’s already dead, right? They can stop sucking up now.” comments my father. This, resulting in a smack and a glare from my mother. This is an odd gesture in Muriel’s favor, because mom is only related to her through marriage.
“Be respectful,” she warns, “I bet she’s still listening to us.” she adds in a mutter.
We walk into the chapel. One of the lights is flickering as a tribute to her memory, I think. Aunt Muriel had once told me a story of how all the angels in heaven communicated with the people on earth via electricity, and anytime there was a light flickering, or one that seemed a little out of place, then it was surely an angel letting you know it was there for you.
She had caught me staring at a flickering light separating the part of the house that received electricity and the part that did not. “No matter how hard you stare child,” she’d snuck up behind me and startled me with her drunken voice. “You ain’t gonna be seeing no angels.”
Angels? I think. “Why would I see angels, when I’m looking at this dying light?”
“Well didn’t I ever tell you how the heavens own angels communicate through the electricity of the world?”
“No,” Sometimes Aunt Muriel has a greater imagination than a six year old, and surly this is one of her most creative ideas yet. “Why would the angels want to communicate with us though?”
“Well darling.” She’d sat me down right there in the carpet, right below the flickering light. It appeared that if there was in angel, it was giving up hope. “Well once you get to heaven, you’ve got to do some work, and many of the angels are sent to be guardians for the people on earth.”
“Like Guardian Angels?”
“Exactly, you are such a smart child. I have one, and so do you.” At this endnote, Muriel’s glass was empty, and the ‘angel’ had given up its hope and the light was left at a faint glow.
I must look pretty stupid standing in the middle of a doorway looking up at a flickering light. But, looking around, stupid might not be too out of place. The pews are a horrible orange color and remind me of a puke stain and in the pews are some 100 people, looking both grim and distracted. The preacher is saying, “Muriel Walker was a very devoted religious woman.” No she wasn’t, I think. She was a devoted alcoholic and thought that she had created her own religion. She told me about it for 152 quarters one thanksgiving.
“Now child,” she had started “sit righ’ down and let Auntie tell you a storah.” I gave her a skeptical look, and she handed me the quarters. I then settled into the couch reeking of cigarette smoke and listened to her tale, sailing on the heavy wind of alcohol.
“Now my Devra, do you know who God is?” I nodded my head.
“Okay child, well let me tell you somethin’ new about God child. God, He came to me in a dream one day after I had finished all my Hail Mary’s. He came and told me that there was more to the religion than the preacher was preachin’.”
Aunt Muriel had read just about every book written by a black author, or those written about black people and liked to tell her stories like she was an old black woman when she was drunk. The dialect stuck something fierce. “He came and he said to me things straight in the face, and I swear my child I could feel his breath on my neck. He said that, that, I had to tell the whole world that we all be needin’ advocates. Yes we all be needing advocates, to get through those golden gates of heaven. Now this is God himself my child. So you know what I be doin’ once I woke up that next mornin’? Well I tell you I waked up and I take my car and I gone and rode down to the priest’s house and told him the news. Preacher, I be saying, listen to what I have to tell, and I go inside and tell him over some coffee about my little encounter with God. And he just be shaking his head up at me like I be lying, and later he called a cab telllin’ me that he’s gonna send me to a nice place where I can tell my story. So I went. And I told it to everyone, all those nice ladies in the white uniforms, and all the people who came and gave me food. And when I got home a few weeks later, guess what happen my child?”
“I don’t know, what ever could have happened auntie?”
“Well dear, the nice ladies, they be telling me it’s time for me to go home, and so I did. And I goed and have a nice meal at my own table, and give old Sardine some tuna to say I was sorry for leavin’ the poor thing, but I told him too, that it was for a good reason that he’d near died while I was away. I don’t think he’s forgiven me neither though. He just hasn’t been the same since, the fleabag. So yes dear, I had myself a meal, and watched some of the tube, and then I went up to my room to take a nap, and I said my prayers to the Father, telling him all about how I had went to tell all the nice people about his message, and you wouldn’t believe it but He came to me again! He came and be telling me that the people didn’t hear my message, and that I had to be telling them to do more, but then there must have been some spiritual disturbance, because He just up and proofed away and I never did get to hear what it was I was supposed to tell them people. But all that matters is that I got them the first message. And I know now that I’m getting old Devra, so I asked God and he be sayin’ it’s okay if I go and tell you that you are going to have to be the new messenger, that you have to go run along and go tell all your friends that they have to have advocates to tell God and Jesus that you are worthy enough to go and live with them when you die. But you don’t have to worry dear, you don’t have to worry one bit about getting an advocate, because you got one long life ahead of you, as I sure as I don’t, so I’ll be long hanging with God in heaven before you do and I’ll surely put in a good word for you when you be going to need an advocate. Think on it, and go and eat some suppers.”
Aunt Muriel nearly scared the religion right out of me after that. Going on and on about all her crackpot phonies about her religion and how she could talk to God. Sitting here, now, though I’m getting to wonder about it. Do I really need an advocate to get into those pearly gates of heaven? I sure so want to be able to get through, and I don’t think I can count of Aunt Muriel to get me there, bribed angels, or not.
A thin lady with bobbed blonde hair in an unsightly green collared dress is standing at the podium.
“Muriel Walker was a fine cook in her younger days; she always had the right combinations of spices that made your tongue tingle and your stomach eat past its fill.”
I didn’t know Auntie Muriel in her younger days, nor do I know if I wanted to, but nevertheless I have no counter argument to the quality of her cooking and the testament of the green-dressed lady. Uninterested, I begin to look around the room at the people, the thought of advocates still on my mind. On my left is my mom. I guess she’d be my advocate if I truly needed one, but she always says my room is a mess and that I’m too moody.
Down the pew some more is my cousin Andy. He’s into sports, and is wickedly attractive. We have had some pretty fun times together over the years, mostly making fun of Aunt Muriel, but we were also caught with two of Muriel’s wine bottles, emptied, laughing and climbing all over each other in the barn. Maybe both Andy and I should find advocates who know our more angelic sides.
There is a screaming sob coming from the podium, and everyone in the chapel is staring at the woman in the green dress, holding wads of tissues to her face and being escorted down by dear Uncle Carter. Replacing the lady in the green dress is a man wringing his hands, and smiling sympathetically. I think I’ve seen him before at Muriel’s house, and vaguely remember her calling him Sonny, but odds are that she was drunk as she was also calling the railing Father Mike that night. “My mother, Muriel Walker, was a woman of her own.”
I guess I’m right he is her son. I wonder if he’s as messed up as she was.
“Although she wasn’t the most, how do I put this, responsible, yes she wasn’t the most responsible of parents, but she did make a mean tuna casserole Hilda,” he nods towards the woman in the green dress, now being held by a stout balding man, who looks not very happy to be here.
“My mother struggled with alcoholism for most of her life, and I applaud her at her many attempts to quit her addiction. It was hard to raise my brother, my sister, and me, and she really took it hard after our sister, Amber, died. After that her first attempt at quitting the bottle, she promised me and Arthur that she would be there more for us. That was the best two weeks of my childhood. When her attention became lacking to us children, she had to admit herself to the mental institution. It was only a few weeks that Arthur and I had to fend for ourselves, but I thank her for that too because, getting help for herself helped to teach us children to fend for ourselves- a quality that many other children don’t have. When Ma came back from the hospital for the fifth time, she just never recovered. She kept forgetting us boys in the car and in parking lots, and I always felt sympathetic for her. When Arthur and I got old enough to move out of the house and were preparing to go to school, she really broke down. It killed us as her children to have to leave her. That’s when we bought her Sniffles, her first cat. I don’t blame her for accidentally thinking the cat was a burglar and shooting it that first night. She was scared, and she was in her huge house without her boys around to protect her. She was clearly devastated at the loss of Sniffles and Arthur and I even pooled our money to buy her an apartment nearer to the University of Vermont but she didn’t want to have to pack up all of her precious knick-knacks, so I drove up that next weekend and we bought her Sardine, who now lives with the Lancaster’s.” he nods now towards our family, and everyone besides me struggles to give a smile. I still don’t see what they have against Sardine.
“Anyway, my mother lived a full life and I think that she’d be so happy to see all of you here, and I’d like to thank you for that in her behalf. I know that through her religious diligence, she is now having a well deserved reunion with her daughter Amber, her first husband, Michael, and her third and fifth husbands, Jackson and Harry. I would now like to take a moment and invite you all to participate in a minute of silence for Muriel Walker,” young Clinton Walker finishes his speech about his mother, and wiping his eyes on an embroidered hanky, walks back to his seat in the front row next to who I assume to be his wife, three children, and his brother, Arthur who hasn’t once stood up or moved to wipe a tear from his eye.
Lots of people are bowing their heads, including, reluctantly, my parents. I deicide that I should too, but can only keep my eyes closed for a few seconds, and lift one suspecting eyelid open. Through my peripheral vision I see Grandpa Steve pick his nose and wipe it on the pew. Cousin Samantha is checking her tons of makeup in a heart shaped compact, and yanking her top over her chest, which seems to be spilling all over the back of the pew in front of her. I dare to lift my head and peer to the front of the room. Clinton Walker’s daughter, Nora Jean, is looking back at me too. I smile and wave, but she just gives me a blank stare then whips around and pulls on her daddy’s shirt. I give the back of her blonde pig-tailed head a glare, and am interrupted by a heavily accented, high-pitched voice. At the podium is Louise. I have no idea how exactly this eccentric woman is related to me, or how she got upfront so quickly. Louise pronounces her J’s like Y’s, and when she talks, you can’t stand but laugh. I am annoyed at once, as funerals aren’t places for laughter, even if does have the word fun in it.
“I think it’s so great that all of us have each other to yoin together today and to yust be there to mourn and to overcome this great loss. For those of you who don’t know me,” (Louise cannot go a conversation without talking about herself) “I’m Louise Parkinson, and my life long mission to serve started 10 years ago when I left the country to go to work in orphanages in Yamaica.”
When Louise left for Jamaica we all thought that she would come back with a
tan--nothing more and nothing less. What she did come back with we never expected.
“I yust couldn’t leave without taking pity on those poor children. So I stayed an extra year, and got the papers in to fly 13 Yamaican children home with me. I have 5 boys and 8 girls.” She counts them out on her fingers. “My little boys are; Yovan (Jovan), Kasen, Benton, Edgerin, and Bevaun. That’s five rights? Right, that's five. And my little girls are named, Yavina (Javina), Yamila (Jamila), Sakina, Yoelle (Joelle), Butterfly, Cantrice, Tashaonda, and Mylandra. And that’s eight girls. Now some people may think that 13 orphans is yust too much for one single parent, but no, I even brought back a pregnant, emaciated, three legged dog that we all saved from the streets too. His name is Yack (Jack), and never did end up having those puppies... Anyway, oh yes! Muriel, she was such a kind woman, who always liked to watch over the children when I wanted to go clubbing or yust needed a night out. Each of the kids even had their own room in that house of hers. I think it was good company for her since her children had moved out and hardly visited her anymore.” Louise gave a glare over to Arthur.
“The children loved her and they miss her very much.”
With that, seven little Jamaican children dressed in their blacks came running through the church, screaming and laughing, with not a care to the fact that their so called beloved auntie was dead.
“Well they may not be showing it now, but the fact hasn’t really set in yet, and they’re still in the denial stage.” This was Louise’s’ quick reaction and attempt to draw the attention away from the kids. They were really sweet kids anyway, despite the fact that their adoptive mother was slightly abnormal.
Butterfly, was a really good kid, about my age, and all we’d ever had was fun. The room always seems to get a bit warmer when she came in, like she’s got some special air about her none of the other kids have. Aunt Muriel called it their special bond, and was convinced that they were sisters. Maybe she thought that because her memory was receding and she could swear that her mothers name was Rosa too. Or maybe it was something small and unnoticeable to any normal eye, like they both liked their pizza Chicago style, or they used the same body wash. Whatever it was, Muriel was thoroughly convinced that she and the rich coca skinned orphan with the beautifully frizzy hair, who could tell a story better than any of her novellas, was her sister, and she wouldn’t hear it any other way.
The eccentric woman who called herself Louise was already working at the orphanage in Jamaica when Butterfly and Kasen arrived. Unlike the other workers, who all left after the same amount of time passed, Louise stayed and stayed, until one day, after Butterfly and her brother had been living amongst all the other ‘unwanted’, as they called themselves, Louise told her that she was going to go back with her to America.
That night, Butterfly packed her few things, and had them ready when the sun rose, and raced to find Louise the next morning. Louise told her to unpack her things for they weren’t going to be leaving for a few more days. Days turned to weeks, and weeks to months, and months to almost a year. When finally, Butterfly, her brother, and 11 other children were taken by a group of volunteers to the bathhouse. They were bathed, clothed, and piled into a white van. When they pulled up to the airport, a wave of excitement emitted from the sliding doors, as 13 coca skinned children, 5 boys and 8 girls, a three legged dog, and one beaming woman marched down the terminal, singing chorus’ of songs about to take their flight to America.
Butterfly was very much American by the time I met her at Muriel’s. It was just a weekend, and it was insisted that I be there for the children’s first sleepover. All I saw when I helped make 10 boxes of Macaroni and Cheese, was a group of giddy, root beer skinned children, 8 of which had hair stringed with the kind of beads I hadn’t used since kindergarten. It wasn’t until I had gone looking for Sardine the cat that I found my favorite feline companion already soaking up attention from someone else. She was humming and rubbing her face in the calico fur of the animal. She had skin and hair like all the others, but she just wasn’t like them.
I bet Butterfly would have a good word to put in for me if I ever got into a sticky situation, as I would her, she could be my advocate, and I hers. But being the same age, what if I died first? Could God really talk to people like Muriel claimed he did? Well of course he wouldn’t come and talk to some drunken crazed person, but would He take an advocate for a dead person from a still living person?
Now I’m onto thinking about God, and the connection between heaven and earth. Does some bridge connect them? And does this bridge have two lanes, one for coming and one for going? Or maybe there are two separate bridges so that the people coming to earth don’t see what’s going to happen after their life is over when they stare into the faces of those who are returning. Or maybe God’s up in all of the technology and he has teleports, and the two people don’t have to look at each other at all. Well whatever way it is, it doesn’t really matter because in the end (or the beginning?) we all have just made a huge circle and returned back to where we came from.
I have a sudden urge to pee, and I stumble over people’s legs trying to get out of the pew. I need to be freed of this tangle of polyester and nylon, so I stand up and step over legs of black tights, heel shoes, suit pants, and dress shoes, doing all this, while trying to hold the piss inside of me. People don’t really notice me stepping on their good shoes; they are too occupied with listening to Louise’s tale. I leave the chapel and look down the hall. The urge is growing and I am grateful that there seems to be only one way to go. I turn to the left and follow the cream colored walls adorned with different pictures of Christ; the pictures which make people’s faith more convincing.
That’s one thing that I expected to be in Muriel’s house: pictures of Jesus. Jesus, or God or some photo-shopped portrait of the three of them as the family she always claimed they were. Despite all the half-baked stories she told about how she was so close to God, not even one picture hung anywhere. Or, anywhere I saw.
Oh man do I have to pee now! It’s like when I’ve waited the whole school day avoiding the disgusting bathrooms that have been in need of a remodeling job for the past twenty years, but it hasn’t really hit until I am on the bus. That first speed bump in the parking lot and, wham! It hits me just how full my bladder really is. It hits hard, and hurts too. I’ve tried running the few yards to my house and just run to the bathroom, but whenever I try to run it hurts more, and I feel like I can’t hold it any longer. I force myself to do the awkward shuffle-step, and hike my jeans up into me. This is just like that, but with a less sure sense of distance to my relief.
I round the corner of the hallway, thankful that I only have a few more feet to shuffle until I can reach my hand out and push that door with the stick figure lady. Once I get that door past me, I begin pulling down my sticky tights. I don’t even wait to be in the stall. I fall onto the toilet, and exhale. It’s such a relief to relieve.
The tile here has an interesting pattern, like they were hand painted with the intention of adorning with some aquatic creature, but the artist kept making the same mistake on each tile. The bathroom has the same sickening colors and walls that don’t match the tile, as every bathroom in my life seems to.
From the crack between the door and the stall wall, I can see the sink. It has a long skinny neck that curves and reminds me of a giraffe. Aunt Muriel had a pair of giraffe bookends in her downstairs study. They were purple colored with teal spots, and they sat. This always bothered me as completely unrealistic, because the way they were sitting was like a cat, and any real giraffe’s legs would be too long to bend in such a way. It might as well have been sculptures of Sardine, with a long neck.
It was in that study that we all sat down to hear Raymond Mike read the Last Will and testament of Ms. Muriel May Brown Tanner Oakley Price Walker. He had been traveling for days, meeting individually with everyone listed in Aunt Muriel’s Will. Raymond was my father’s best friend growing up. His grandfather was the preacher at St. Christopher’s, which is where the family used to go to Mass every Sunday, and where I was baptized when I was four and a quarter months old.
Once, Raymond and my father told a story of how Aunt Muriel had caught them sneaking Swiss army knives from the box behind the blue-shelf copy of Langston Hughes. I say the blue shelf, because in Aunt Muriel’s study—every book and every title appeared duplicated on each wall as if she only had enough favorites to fill one side of the room, but was cursed with four walls, by design. On the blue shelf, next to the sleeping-cat giraffes, Raymond and Thomas had found the box wrapped in the flag of Cuba. They had been hidden there by Muriel’s second husband, had an obsession with Cuban artifacts, which Dad said he could never understand. They had been there for years already, dusty, and near useless. Dad assumed Muriel had forgotten all about them, but with the cursing and beating by umbrella that followed, well, Raymond and Thomas decided that perhaps they were something special after all and should probably take a break from exploring the house as well as each other’s influence. Raymond went away with 12 umbrella handle shaped bruises all over his back, one for every year of his age. Father Mike—Raymond’s Grand-Dad, gave the same sermon three weeks in a row after that, all about the evils of the natural man and how it should be “put off”—whatever that meant. Dad said he was not sure if the message was meant for Raymond or Muriel—neither of which attended church regularly, but they never showed hear it. Two years later, Dad stopped going to Church too, and only returned three times. Twice, on the occasions of each of his children being blessed and baptized to enter the gates of heaven, and today—to hear all about the Aunt Muriel that individually estranged a family of 80 cousins, aunts and uncles—and simultaneously brought them together again, in their love of her worth, no matter if none of them cared about her heart.
How funny it was to me, then, when we heard how she left her millions to be divided! Funny to me, because dumb to my parents, in my lifetime Aunt Muriel had likely handed me six or seven hundred dollars in quarters. I counted them every first Sunday of the month, and kept them in a large cardboard box under all the unworn gifted turtleneck sweaters. When Raymond Mike read that the riches were to be divided and held in trusts for 100 charities, museums, and homes for wildlife—my parents looked as sick and pale as the wax figure of a scuba diver Muriel had once offered half of her fortune for at a museum of natural history. In fact, they were to learn that day that Aunt Muriel had saved enough for my brother Duncan, me and Butterfly to go to any college or university we wanted, while they themselves were to inherit only the thing she prized more than money. More than God and Jesus and maybe even gin—Sardine the cat. That’s how much she loved Thomas and Marie. I thought it was both sweet and hilarious, but Dad had cursed the cat every morning for the last 9 days watching her slurp her tuna between her two missing front teeth. “That’s just as life is Devra,” Aunt Muriel would have told me. “First you make the pot, fire it, and lay it out to dry in da beautiful sunshine—then while you away admiring, the blue jays come and shit all over it and you have to just call it art. A free painting from da earth.” She would have laughed and laughed and laughed, and I would have too—thinking of blue jay shit, and wondering if ever, it was blue, too?
Sitting on the cracked toilet in the mismatched bathroom of St. Christopher’s, I laughed out-loud and was at once surprised to hear it echo so perfectly—so tonally back at me—like one of Butterfly’s warm Yamaican, err, Jamaican hugs—sticky, and faultless.
“Be respectful,” she warns, “I bet she’s still listening to us.” she adds in a mutter.
We walk into the chapel. One of the lights is flickering as a tribute to her memory, I think. Aunt Muriel had once told me a story of how all the angels in heaven communicated with the people on earth via electricity, and anytime there was a light flickering, or one that seemed a little out of place, then it was surely an angel letting you know it was there for you.
She had caught me staring at a flickering light separating the part of the house that received electricity and the part that did not. “No matter how hard you stare child,” she’d snuck up behind me and startled me with her drunken voice. “You ain’t gonna be seeing no angels.”
Angels? I think. “Why would I see angels, when I’m looking at this dying light?”
“Well didn’t I ever tell you how the heavens own angels communicate through the electricity of the world?”
“No,” Sometimes Aunt Muriel has a greater imagination than a six year old, and surly this is one of her most creative ideas yet. “Why would the angels want to communicate with us though?”
“Well darling.” She’d sat me down right there in the carpet, right below the flickering light. It appeared that if there was in angel, it was giving up hope. “Well once you get to heaven, you’ve got to do some work, and many of the angels are sent to be guardians for the people on earth.”
“Like Guardian Angels?”
“Exactly, you are such a smart child. I have one, and so do you.” At this endnote, Muriel’s glass was empty, and the ‘angel’ had given up its hope and the light was left at a faint glow.
I must look pretty stupid standing in the middle of a doorway looking up at a flickering light. But, looking around, stupid might not be too out of place. The pews are a horrible orange color and remind me of a puke stain and in the pews are some 100 people, looking both grim and distracted. The preacher is saying, “Muriel Walker was a very devoted religious woman.” No she wasn’t, I think. She was a devoted alcoholic and thought that she had created her own religion. She told me about it for 152 quarters one thanksgiving.
“Now child,” she had started “sit righ’ down and let Auntie tell you a storah.” I gave her a skeptical look, and she handed me the quarters. I then settled into the couch reeking of cigarette smoke and listened to her tale, sailing on the heavy wind of alcohol.
“Now my Devra, do you know who God is?” I nodded my head.
“Okay child, well let me tell you somethin’ new about God child. God, He came to me in a dream one day after I had finished all my Hail Mary’s. He came and told me that there was more to the religion than the preacher was preachin’.”
Aunt Muriel had read just about every book written by a black author, or those written about black people and liked to tell her stories like she was an old black woman when she was drunk. The dialect stuck something fierce. “He came and he said to me things straight in the face, and I swear my child I could feel his breath on my neck. He said that, that, I had to tell the whole world that we all be needin’ advocates. Yes we all be needing advocates, to get through those golden gates of heaven. Now this is God himself my child. So you know what I be doin’ once I woke up that next mornin’? Well I tell you I waked up and I take my car and I gone and rode down to the priest’s house and told him the news. Preacher, I be saying, listen to what I have to tell, and I go inside and tell him over some coffee about my little encounter with God. And he just be shaking his head up at me like I be lying, and later he called a cab telllin’ me that he’s gonna send me to a nice place where I can tell my story. So I went. And I told it to everyone, all those nice ladies in the white uniforms, and all the people who came and gave me food. And when I got home a few weeks later, guess what happen my child?”
“I don’t know, what ever could have happened auntie?”
“Well dear, the nice ladies, they be telling me it’s time for me to go home, and so I did. And I goed and have a nice meal at my own table, and give old Sardine some tuna to say I was sorry for leavin’ the poor thing, but I told him too, that it was for a good reason that he’d near died while I was away. I don’t think he’s forgiven me neither though. He just hasn’t been the same since, the fleabag. So yes dear, I had myself a meal, and watched some of the tube, and then I went up to my room to take a nap, and I said my prayers to the Father, telling him all about how I had went to tell all the nice people about his message, and you wouldn’t believe it but He came to me again! He came and be telling me that the people didn’t hear my message, and that I had to be telling them to do more, but then there must have been some spiritual disturbance, because He just up and proofed away and I never did get to hear what it was I was supposed to tell them people. But all that matters is that I got them the first message. And I know now that I’m getting old Devra, so I asked God and he be sayin’ it’s okay if I go and tell you that you are going to have to be the new messenger, that you have to go run along and go tell all your friends that they have to have advocates to tell God and Jesus that you are worthy enough to go and live with them when you die. But you don’t have to worry dear, you don’t have to worry one bit about getting an advocate, because you got one long life ahead of you, as I sure as I don’t, so I’ll be long hanging with God in heaven before you do and I’ll surely put in a good word for you when you be going to need an advocate. Think on it, and go and eat some suppers.”
Aunt Muriel nearly scared the religion right out of me after that. Going on and on about all her crackpot phonies about her religion and how she could talk to God. Sitting here, now, though I’m getting to wonder about it. Do I really need an advocate to get into those pearly gates of heaven? I sure so want to be able to get through, and I don’t think I can count of Aunt Muriel to get me there, bribed angels, or not.
A thin lady with bobbed blonde hair in an unsightly green collared dress is standing at the podium.
“Muriel Walker was a fine cook in her younger days; she always had the right combinations of spices that made your tongue tingle and your stomach eat past its fill.”
I didn’t know Auntie Muriel in her younger days, nor do I know if I wanted to, but nevertheless I have no counter argument to the quality of her cooking and the testament of the green-dressed lady. Uninterested, I begin to look around the room at the people, the thought of advocates still on my mind. On my left is my mom. I guess she’d be my advocate if I truly needed one, but she always says my room is a mess and that I’m too moody.
Down the pew some more is my cousin Andy. He’s into sports, and is wickedly attractive. We have had some pretty fun times together over the years, mostly making fun of Aunt Muriel, but we were also caught with two of Muriel’s wine bottles, emptied, laughing and climbing all over each other in the barn. Maybe both Andy and I should find advocates who know our more angelic sides.
There is a screaming sob coming from the podium, and everyone in the chapel is staring at the woman in the green dress, holding wads of tissues to her face and being escorted down by dear Uncle Carter. Replacing the lady in the green dress is a man wringing his hands, and smiling sympathetically. I think I’ve seen him before at Muriel’s house, and vaguely remember her calling him Sonny, but odds are that she was drunk as she was also calling the railing Father Mike that night. “My mother, Muriel Walker, was a woman of her own.”
I guess I’m right he is her son. I wonder if he’s as messed up as she was.
“Although she wasn’t the most, how do I put this, responsible, yes she wasn’t the most responsible of parents, but she did make a mean tuna casserole Hilda,” he nods towards the woman in the green dress, now being held by a stout balding man, who looks not very happy to be here.
“My mother struggled with alcoholism for most of her life, and I applaud her at her many attempts to quit her addiction. It was hard to raise my brother, my sister, and me, and she really took it hard after our sister, Amber, died. After that her first attempt at quitting the bottle, she promised me and Arthur that she would be there more for us. That was the best two weeks of my childhood. When her attention became lacking to us children, she had to admit herself to the mental institution. It was only a few weeks that Arthur and I had to fend for ourselves, but I thank her for that too because, getting help for herself helped to teach us children to fend for ourselves- a quality that many other children don’t have. When Ma came back from the hospital for the fifth time, she just never recovered. She kept forgetting us boys in the car and in parking lots, and I always felt sympathetic for her. When Arthur and I got old enough to move out of the house and were preparing to go to school, she really broke down. It killed us as her children to have to leave her. That’s when we bought her Sniffles, her first cat. I don’t blame her for accidentally thinking the cat was a burglar and shooting it that first night. She was scared, and she was in her huge house without her boys around to protect her. She was clearly devastated at the loss of Sniffles and Arthur and I even pooled our money to buy her an apartment nearer to the University of Vermont but she didn’t want to have to pack up all of her precious knick-knacks, so I drove up that next weekend and we bought her Sardine, who now lives with the Lancaster’s.” he nods now towards our family, and everyone besides me struggles to give a smile. I still don’t see what they have against Sardine.
“Anyway, my mother lived a full life and I think that she’d be so happy to see all of you here, and I’d like to thank you for that in her behalf. I know that through her religious diligence, she is now having a well deserved reunion with her daughter Amber, her first husband, Michael, and her third and fifth husbands, Jackson and Harry. I would now like to take a moment and invite you all to participate in a minute of silence for Muriel Walker,” young Clinton Walker finishes his speech about his mother, and wiping his eyes on an embroidered hanky, walks back to his seat in the front row next to who I assume to be his wife, three children, and his brother, Arthur who hasn’t once stood up or moved to wipe a tear from his eye.
Lots of people are bowing their heads, including, reluctantly, my parents. I deicide that I should too, but can only keep my eyes closed for a few seconds, and lift one suspecting eyelid open. Through my peripheral vision I see Grandpa Steve pick his nose and wipe it on the pew. Cousin Samantha is checking her tons of makeup in a heart shaped compact, and yanking her top over her chest, which seems to be spilling all over the back of the pew in front of her. I dare to lift my head and peer to the front of the room. Clinton Walker’s daughter, Nora Jean, is looking back at me too. I smile and wave, but she just gives me a blank stare then whips around and pulls on her daddy’s shirt. I give the back of her blonde pig-tailed head a glare, and am interrupted by a heavily accented, high-pitched voice. At the podium is Louise. I have no idea how exactly this eccentric woman is related to me, or how she got upfront so quickly. Louise pronounces her J’s like Y’s, and when she talks, you can’t stand but laugh. I am annoyed at once, as funerals aren’t places for laughter, even if does have the word fun in it.
“I think it’s so great that all of us have each other to yoin together today and to yust be there to mourn and to overcome this great loss. For those of you who don’t know me,” (Louise cannot go a conversation without talking about herself) “I’m Louise Parkinson, and my life long mission to serve started 10 years ago when I left the country to go to work in orphanages in Yamaica.”
When Louise left for Jamaica we all thought that she would come back with a
tan--nothing more and nothing less. What she did come back with we never expected.
“I yust couldn’t leave without taking pity on those poor children. So I stayed an extra year, and got the papers in to fly 13 Yamaican children home with me. I have 5 boys and 8 girls.” She counts them out on her fingers. “My little boys are; Yovan (Jovan), Kasen, Benton, Edgerin, and Bevaun. That’s five rights? Right, that's five. And my little girls are named, Yavina (Javina), Yamila (Jamila), Sakina, Yoelle (Joelle), Butterfly, Cantrice, Tashaonda, and Mylandra. And that’s eight girls. Now some people may think that 13 orphans is yust too much for one single parent, but no, I even brought back a pregnant, emaciated, three legged dog that we all saved from the streets too. His name is Yack (Jack), and never did end up having those puppies... Anyway, oh yes! Muriel, she was such a kind woman, who always liked to watch over the children when I wanted to go clubbing or yust needed a night out. Each of the kids even had their own room in that house of hers. I think it was good company for her since her children had moved out and hardly visited her anymore.” Louise gave a glare over to Arthur.
“The children loved her and they miss her very much.”
With that, seven little Jamaican children dressed in their blacks came running through the church, screaming and laughing, with not a care to the fact that their so called beloved auntie was dead.
“Well they may not be showing it now, but the fact hasn’t really set in yet, and they’re still in the denial stage.” This was Louise’s’ quick reaction and attempt to draw the attention away from the kids. They were really sweet kids anyway, despite the fact that their adoptive mother was slightly abnormal.
Butterfly, was a really good kid, about my age, and all we’d ever had was fun. The room always seems to get a bit warmer when she came in, like she’s got some special air about her none of the other kids have. Aunt Muriel called it their special bond, and was convinced that they were sisters. Maybe she thought that because her memory was receding and she could swear that her mothers name was Rosa too. Or maybe it was something small and unnoticeable to any normal eye, like they both liked their pizza Chicago style, or they used the same body wash. Whatever it was, Muriel was thoroughly convinced that she and the rich coca skinned orphan with the beautifully frizzy hair, who could tell a story better than any of her novellas, was her sister, and she wouldn’t hear it any other way.
The eccentric woman who called herself Louise was already working at the orphanage in Jamaica when Butterfly and Kasen arrived. Unlike the other workers, who all left after the same amount of time passed, Louise stayed and stayed, until one day, after Butterfly and her brother had been living amongst all the other ‘unwanted’, as they called themselves, Louise told her that she was going to go back with her to America.
That night, Butterfly packed her few things, and had them ready when the sun rose, and raced to find Louise the next morning. Louise told her to unpack her things for they weren’t going to be leaving for a few more days. Days turned to weeks, and weeks to months, and months to almost a year. When finally, Butterfly, her brother, and 11 other children were taken by a group of volunteers to the bathhouse. They were bathed, clothed, and piled into a white van. When they pulled up to the airport, a wave of excitement emitted from the sliding doors, as 13 coca skinned children, 5 boys and 8 girls, a three legged dog, and one beaming woman marched down the terminal, singing chorus’ of songs about to take their flight to America.
Butterfly was very much American by the time I met her at Muriel’s. It was just a weekend, and it was insisted that I be there for the children’s first sleepover. All I saw when I helped make 10 boxes of Macaroni and Cheese, was a group of giddy, root beer skinned children, 8 of which had hair stringed with the kind of beads I hadn’t used since kindergarten. It wasn’t until I had gone looking for Sardine the cat that I found my favorite feline companion already soaking up attention from someone else. She was humming and rubbing her face in the calico fur of the animal. She had skin and hair like all the others, but she just wasn’t like them.
I bet Butterfly would have a good word to put in for me if I ever got into a sticky situation, as I would her, she could be my advocate, and I hers. But being the same age, what if I died first? Could God really talk to people like Muriel claimed he did? Well of course he wouldn’t come and talk to some drunken crazed person, but would He take an advocate for a dead person from a still living person?
Now I’m onto thinking about God, and the connection between heaven and earth. Does some bridge connect them? And does this bridge have two lanes, one for coming and one for going? Or maybe there are two separate bridges so that the people coming to earth don’t see what’s going to happen after their life is over when they stare into the faces of those who are returning. Or maybe God’s up in all of the technology and he has teleports, and the two people don’t have to look at each other at all. Well whatever way it is, it doesn’t really matter because in the end (or the beginning?) we all have just made a huge circle and returned back to where we came from.
I have a sudden urge to pee, and I stumble over people’s legs trying to get out of the pew. I need to be freed of this tangle of polyester and nylon, so I stand up and step over legs of black tights, heel shoes, suit pants, and dress shoes, doing all this, while trying to hold the piss inside of me. People don’t really notice me stepping on their good shoes; they are too occupied with listening to Louise’s tale. I leave the chapel and look down the hall. The urge is growing and I am grateful that there seems to be only one way to go. I turn to the left and follow the cream colored walls adorned with different pictures of Christ; the pictures which make people’s faith more convincing.
That’s one thing that I expected to be in Muriel’s house: pictures of Jesus. Jesus, or God or some photo-shopped portrait of the three of them as the family she always claimed they were. Despite all the half-baked stories she told about how she was so close to God, not even one picture hung anywhere. Or, anywhere I saw.
Oh man do I have to pee now! It’s like when I’ve waited the whole school day avoiding the disgusting bathrooms that have been in need of a remodeling job for the past twenty years, but it hasn’t really hit until I am on the bus. That first speed bump in the parking lot and, wham! It hits me just how full my bladder really is. It hits hard, and hurts too. I’ve tried running the few yards to my house and just run to the bathroom, but whenever I try to run it hurts more, and I feel like I can’t hold it any longer. I force myself to do the awkward shuffle-step, and hike my jeans up into me. This is just like that, but with a less sure sense of distance to my relief.
I round the corner of the hallway, thankful that I only have a few more feet to shuffle until I can reach my hand out and push that door with the stick figure lady. Once I get that door past me, I begin pulling down my sticky tights. I don’t even wait to be in the stall. I fall onto the toilet, and exhale. It’s such a relief to relieve.
The tile here has an interesting pattern, like they were hand painted with the intention of adorning with some aquatic creature, but the artist kept making the same mistake on each tile. The bathroom has the same sickening colors and walls that don’t match the tile, as every bathroom in my life seems to.
From the crack between the door and the stall wall, I can see the sink. It has a long skinny neck that curves and reminds me of a giraffe. Aunt Muriel had a pair of giraffe bookends in her downstairs study. They were purple colored with teal spots, and they sat. This always bothered me as completely unrealistic, because the way they were sitting was like a cat, and any real giraffe’s legs would be too long to bend in such a way. It might as well have been sculptures of Sardine, with a long neck.
It was in that study that we all sat down to hear Raymond Mike read the Last Will and testament of Ms. Muriel May Brown Tanner Oakley Price Walker. He had been traveling for days, meeting individually with everyone listed in Aunt Muriel’s Will. Raymond was my father’s best friend growing up. His grandfather was the preacher at St. Christopher’s, which is where the family used to go to Mass every Sunday, and where I was baptized when I was four and a quarter months old.
Once, Raymond and my father told a story of how Aunt Muriel had caught them sneaking Swiss army knives from the box behind the blue-shelf copy of Langston Hughes. I say the blue shelf, because in Aunt Muriel’s study—every book and every title appeared duplicated on each wall as if she only had enough favorites to fill one side of the room, but was cursed with four walls, by design. On the blue shelf, next to the sleeping-cat giraffes, Raymond and Thomas had found the box wrapped in the flag of Cuba. They had been hidden there by Muriel’s second husband, had an obsession with Cuban artifacts, which Dad said he could never understand. They had been there for years already, dusty, and near useless. Dad assumed Muriel had forgotten all about them, but with the cursing and beating by umbrella that followed, well, Raymond and Thomas decided that perhaps they were something special after all and should probably take a break from exploring the house as well as each other’s influence. Raymond went away with 12 umbrella handle shaped bruises all over his back, one for every year of his age. Father Mike—Raymond’s Grand-Dad, gave the same sermon three weeks in a row after that, all about the evils of the natural man and how it should be “put off”—whatever that meant. Dad said he was not sure if the message was meant for Raymond or Muriel—neither of which attended church regularly, but they never showed hear it. Two years later, Dad stopped going to Church too, and only returned three times. Twice, on the occasions of each of his children being blessed and baptized to enter the gates of heaven, and today—to hear all about the Aunt Muriel that individually estranged a family of 80 cousins, aunts and uncles—and simultaneously brought them together again, in their love of her worth, no matter if none of them cared about her heart.
How funny it was to me, then, when we heard how she left her millions to be divided! Funny to me, because dumb to my parents, in my lifetime Aunt Muriel had likely handed me six or seven hundred dollars in quarters. I counted them every first Sunday of the month, and kept them in a large cardboard box under all the unworn gifted turtleneck sweaters. When Raymond Mike read that the riches were to be divided and held in trusts for 100 charities, museums, and homes for wildlife—my parents looked as sick and pale as the wax figure of a scuba diver Muriel had once offered half of her fortune for at a museum of natural history. In fact, they were to learn that day that Aunt Muriel had saved enough for my brother Duncan, me and Butterfly to go to any college or university we wanted, while they themselves were to inherit only the thing she prized more than money. More than God and Jesus and maybe even gin—Sardine the cat. That’s how much she loved Thomas and Marie. I thought it was both sweet and hilarious, but Dad had cursed the cat every morning for the last 9 days watching her slurp her tuna between her two missing front teeth. “That’s just as life is Devra,” Aunt Muriel would have told me. “First you make the pot, fire it, and lay it out to dry in da beautiful sunshine—then while you away admiring, the blue jays come and shit all over it and you have to just call it art. A free painting from da earth.” She would have laughed and laughed and laughed, and I would have too—thinking of blue jay shit, and wondering if ever, it was blue, too?
Sitting on the cracked toilet in the mismatched bathroom of St. Christopher’s, I laughed out-loud and was at once surprised to hear it echo so perfectly—so tonally back at me—like one of Butterfly’s warm Yamaican, err, Jamaican hugs—sticky, and faultless.
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