The Living Room, a showcase column for TNC staffer, Stacey Tolbert, is a place where art, politics, editorials, mantras, writing tips, and holistic life hang out. Come on in, have a seat, kick your feet up, and stay awhile. The column will feature poetry from myself, poetry from other poets, mantras, holistic material, writing tips, excerpts from my work, political info, people spotlights, editorials, rantings, and ravings.
This issue, I offer to you an excerpt from my novel-in-progress, A Quarter Past the Blues. In this excerpt, become a fly on the wall and enter a Southern tale of love, death, and secrets that many take to the grave; one of the main characters, Garvi, has a secret to painful that she may just make it to the grave is she has to keep it under lock and key forever.
La Vie est La Mort
Life is Death
After I did it, I felt like a sinning saint.
The day it happened, my “gifted” Aunt Octavia called me at about the same time the moon hands it over to the sun.
“Aunt Octavia?”
“Wait, how did you know it was me calling? See, I knew you had the gifts too,” she said excitedly.
“Yes, I have the gift of caller I.D.”
“Listen. I had a telling dream.
“I don’t believe in telling dreams.”
I was lying. My family is a gifted philosophical mixture of staunch Christianity and supernatural-naturalness; Mother was different. She raised me not to believe in anything except the Lord. I did believe in the unbelievable, but the whole paranormal, supernatural, I–had-a-dream thing scared me to death.
“Garvi, are you listening?” Aunt Octavia asked in her mysterious voice.
“I guess.”
“I dreamed you killed Whiskers.”
“Aunt Octavia, I would never kill Mother’s dog! I don’t even kill bugs. I don’t even eat meat. I don’t…”
“I know all the things you don’t do, but I’m telling you, I saw it. You killed Whiskers.”
“And then what happened?”
“You were standing in the center of an all white room with blood all over your hands. You said you didn’t want to do it, but that you had to do it.”
“And then what?”
“Right under your feet was poor fuzzy Whiskers, dead.”
“How do you know he wasn’t sleeping?”
“Garvi, don’t be a smart ass. He was dead. The dog was dead. There was no blood on him; it was on your hands.”
“Maybe you are losing your powers. Maybe he was sleeping, and I cut my finger.”
“It’s not a joke, Garvi. Please be careful.”
“Aunt Octavia, thanks for warning me, but I like Whiskers, and Mother loves Whiskers. I would never hurt him.”
“Dreams don’t always mean what’s in plain sight. Just do as I say and be careful.”
Prestigious Jesus figures were nailed to the eggshell walls: grant donors and doctors whose last names were followed by up to six degrees of separation from their patients. A partly cloudy banner hung that read, “ Citizen Hospital , we put our patients first.” I imagined the banner with the phrase my grandmother used to say, “La vie est la mort,” life is death.
Ruth Anne’s perfume was a special blend of sex-pot-sizzling and Patchouli oil. She stood under Room 331 like a neon X marks the spot sign.
“Hey there, baby girl, you here to see your daddy?” she said, wiping her eyes and applying lipstick at the same time.
She had a knack for asking questions she already knew the answers to.
“How is he today?” I said, giving her an airbrushed kiss on both cheeks.
“Well to tell you the truth, Garvi, he is grumpy and depressing. He keeps talking about some mansion in the sky.” She paused and stared at me while she shoved her breast back into the comfort of their black lace, push-up home.
“He’s been asking about you all day.”
She walked down the hallway slow and sexy like a stripper starting her show.
“Bye suga, see you later. Come on by for some gumbo. We can cook it up veggie style for you.”
Twelve-hour bedpan piss and dried blood greeted me. Daddy was holding on to his Purple Heart. The one he never talked about. I pushed out a fake smile and walked to his bedside. He looked like an angelic mud stain amidst the heavenly clouds of pillows. The leg he had left dangled off the side of the bed, and his arms were riddled with IV holes that were once heroin holes.
“Hey you! You got another freckle. What does that make, 736?” he said in a slurred drunken voice. But he wasn’t drunk, he was dying.
“Daddy, you’re the only one that ever notices anything about me,” I said, rubbing my nose. “Mother thinks I should dye my hair. She says natural Creole red heads will always be labeled as racy red bones.”
“Nothin’ wrong with being a red bone, look at me,” he mumbled with a weak laugh. In the background I could hear his body negotiating his time with the cancer. I blocked it out and gave him a kiss on forehead.
“Daddy, why don’t you ever talk about being in the war?”
“Nothin’ to talk about. Some lived. Some died. Me being here long enough to see you turn into a beautiful young lady should be story enough, don’t you think?” He closed his eyes. “I do look forward to seeing all my Nam buddies when I get to the big mansion.” Mother always told me not to talk about Vietnam , the Gooks, the Purple Heart, or the drug rehab.
My parents always taught me to be obedient. After all, the Bible even said so. Just before the ending, he managed to belt out a Frank Sinatra “I did it myyyyyyy waayyyyyyy.” Like an unsuspecting lump in perfectly whipped mashed potatoes, he said, “Garvi, I love you. Do this favor for me, please. I have had a long and good life. A fun life. I’ve been a hell of a father. Ruth Anne has no complaints, and your mother and I have had a special love. Look, the room number is even 331, that equals 7. Seven is the number of completeness.”
His argument was compelling. Everything on his body had already turned to winter, all except his eyes. The warmth in his eyes made me do it.
“I don’t want to do it. Mother will be hurt and angry,” I said with tears stuck in my right aorta. I had always been a Daddy’s girl. I had always done what he wanted me to do, when he wanted me to do it with very little questioning.
“Your mother will be fine. She knew the end was near. She made her peace and sealed it with a kiss just yesterday.”
“Are you sure you want me to do it?
“Yes. Let me go. I’ll see you in about 90 years. I’ll be at the big mansion.”
Shortly after I had been the obedient daughter who never disappointed her parents, I wept. The Bible said Jesus wept. I was doing all the right things minus the one thing in the Ten Commandments.
I hate the bleach mopped smell of public restrooms. I hate this stall.
Daddy always said that bathrooms are confessionals for those who know the art of repentance. Maybe Shinita and Marlon were repenting when they chose to write their names on the wall. I hate that it’s only Shinita that declares her love to Marlon, ‘Shinita loves Marlon.’ Marlon is probably a jerk or dead.
I know Mother will be in here to get me soon. She is a stickler for being on time. She has never been late in my life. According to Daddy, the only time she was ever late was when her period didn’t show up and she was pregnant with me.
“Garvi. Beatrice Garvi Michelle La…” she said in a tone I remember at 5 years old.
“No need to say my whole name, Mother,” I yell from the toilet seat. “I’m coming.”
“We need to get this over with so we can move on. Please get yourself together and come out.”
When I open the bathroom door, she gives me a once over. She smoothes my hair down and irons my dress with her hands. As we walk out together, I notice how graceful her steps are. Sometimes, I think I’m made of all of Daddy’s genes.
The strongest of the bunch take Polaroid pictures to remember him or forget him. Innocent children get sorely disappointed when “Daddy Joe” barely resembles the man who kept their pockets full of crisp dollar bills and expensive candy. They now have a better understanding of what the elders mean when they call cancer the “hungry disease.” Tissue ready ushers with Lee’s Press On nails mechanically shake hands and heads while they stand close by the beige and gold embroidered bed rest.
Daddy described the casket like it was a home he would soon be moving into. I distinctly remember feeling like picking it out was unnecessary, and I suddenly became to ill to attend the all-important dinner concerning the will. Dessert was another matter. The peach cobbler was just warm enough to play footsie with the ice cream. Daddy and I got in trouble for laughing so loudly,
“What in God’s creation are you all cackling about?” said Mother.
Neither one of us would tell her because she wouldn’t see the humor in our belly laughs. Southern Belles don’t laugh at dead jokes.
His sunken cheek is cold and rubbery, and the nose hairs that used to play hide and seek with the world have been cut. Mother urged him to cut those bothersome nose hairs, but he said it was a holistic way for the boogers to come out. I look inside, but there are no boogers, not even one. The holistic way is dead.
Every since Great Grandma Yvette died and Uncle Ray Gene and Auntie Delilah got into a huge post funeral argument over whom paid the most money for the coffin bill, I detest everything about funerals. Funny how the smallest details of life vividly paint themselves when the canvass itself is long gone. In the midst of flying receipts, made-up obscenities, slamming doors and divvying up antiques, Daddy whispered in my ear, “When my alarm clock goes off, I want to be cremated. The ushers have to have on white suits and 20-inch Afros. Nina Simone has to be the preacher and the singer. Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk will be my pallbearers and e-v-e-r-y body will have to wear bright, bright colors. In between people snottin’ and cryin’ because they can’t believe I’m gone, chocolate truffles will be served and maybe a little Rum and Coke or Vodka and cranberry juice.”
Neither the Lahue’s, nor the Broussard’s and certainly not Ruth Anne, would choose such an outrageously colorful funeral for Joseph Renaud Lahue. There were four things he had a passion for: jazz (his favorite was Nina Simone), family gatherings, food, and people watching. I’m sure he could appreciate the dramatic Southern cast viewing his body.
They walk in somber silence: immaculately polished, teary–eyed Creoles, sad faced Pentecostals in black, born twice-again’s in whatever they think the pastor deems suitable this time around, groups of optimistic Baptists, honorable badges around their necks, mysterious spiritual seers, heads bowed, and emotional funeral first-timers in the midst of Descante’s inner ugly, filthy poor, and dirty rich.
Back pew fashion complainers who reserve their seats at every funeral, speak loudly and conference about the items picked out by Daddy’s Ruth Anne.
My first instinct is to stand up and make a huge announcement to remind them he is dead. He will not holler down from the nearest cloud and say, “Excuse me, have your people call my people and leave a message with the Lord, and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”
I keep reliving the moment when he asked me to do him a favor. I keep control-alt-deleting the voice in my head that calls me a murderer. I was saving him. I was being obedient. I haven’t touched a pillow since.
Four nosey church mothers in the early stages of Alzheimer’s who forgot to put their hearing aids in offer denture smiles and talk about me as if I can’t hear them.
“What is Garvi gonna do now? She was so close to her daddy.”
“Well, when the good Lord calls you, you have to answer. You can’t run.”
“How do you know that God was calling him? Satan has a call list, too.”
“I’m no prophet, but with all that social drinkin’ he was doing, I knew it would happen soon. Cancer likes to drink, too.”
“Look at Garvi’s poor, poor mother.”
“Take a gander at Ruth Anne. They both look so empty.”
“Am I the only one that could see that Joe was a dog?”
“Don’t judge the dead. He was a dog, but he was also a good man. There were lots of Godly men in the Bible who didn’t start off Godly. Doin’ treacherous things…killing, drinking, forinicatin’…”
“Which one of them do you think will get the money?”
“God forbid! That’s not important, but if you really want my opinion, I think Joe was a fair man, he probably split it up evenly between the two and Garvi.”
“Your sure there was just two?”
“No, but those were the most important.”
“The real question is how does a man who is doing badly but stable go from talking and being conscious to being dead in the same day?”
“Garvi was the very last person to see him alive.”
When they drop his body in the ground, Mother closes her eyes and Ruth Anne looks away. I wanted to tell them I killed him, but instead, I wrote my name in the bathroom stall, repented and asked God to wash the blood off of my hands.
