I was over the moon when you were born and delighted (yet flabbergasted) when the twins arrived. I was also happy in the rickety house we rented from Mrs. Sanders, happy when your father was home and the downstairs smelled like coffee. The sound of the press across the street actually relaxed me because it reminded me of piano keys—for once, someone else was practicing besides me. The sight of Chum, the neighborhood bulldog, following the mailman, my bath in the deep clawfoot tub, the feel of your skin, the boys’ skin (delightful!), and the way Samy could coax your grandmother off her high horse simply by having a second helping. She loved cooking for him, and when he’d dig into a cherry pie or an eggplant casserole smothered in cheese, the warmth in her eyes would match the warmth on her cheeks and . . . well, my mother was a sight to behold. And I loved helping my father sort the fruits at his side street market when I was a girl—the smell of MacIntosh apples, tangerines, honeydews, which he let me handle though they were easily bruised. But you never knew him so . . .  I have memories of my own.

             After your father died, a bitter chord began to rise in me. I was naïve about human nature—I’d always taken people at face value—but I could see his death had taken on the proportions of a freak show. For the newspapers I was halfway prepared but not for the questions people I’d known all my life would ask me. I’d be at the grocery and someone would say, “Did he turn blue?” Of course, he turned blue, all dead people do. And then there was the rumor that I didn’t open the coffin because his arms had been cut off. Lorraine, I don’t know what you’ve heard, but your father was buried with both arms intact. However, there was no way Mr. Veach could fix his face, so I decided against an open casket.

            Staring down, I didn’t recognize the man in the coffin, and it wasn’t death that made Samy look unfamiliar. It was what the living had done to make him look less dead. I’m not blaming Mr. Veach, he did the best he could, but Samy had been injured so badly that no amount of embalming fluid could make his face firm. His eyes were sewn shut, one lid a quarter of an inch lower than the other; pancake make-up could not conceal the bruising, especially   around his jaw line; and the cotton stuffed in his cheeks had bunched up looking like, well, bunched up cotton.  

            Questions. Looks. Rumors. It was the women who wouldn’t let it die. For every unanswered question, they made up answers of their own, filling a stew pot fired by their tongues. Its steam rolled over me. Samy was drunk, that’s why he fell down twice. No, he was seeing another woman and Carmen shut the lid because she never wanted to see his face again. He was cut clean in two. His arms were severed. All this from the same women who cooed over babies, tended ailing parents or maiden aunts, spent hours making Shoebox Christmases for deprived children on Indian reservations and hung their pictures, neatly stapled and labeled, on the missionary bulletin board. I’m telling you, Lorraine, a bloodlust arises in women when they don’t get what they want, and I’d deprived them of your father’s face, the sort of face their husbands and sons had seen in the wars. The men never asked me those questions. They asked other things.

            Samy hadn’t been dead a month when I began getting phone calls. Hang-ups during the day because your grandmother was at our house and she was always the first to the phone. But around seven in the evening, the phone would start ringing again. Men I’d known all my life, most of them married, asked if I wanted them to come over to fit the screens in the windows, mow the grass, or change the oil in the car. My favorite line was, “If you ever need anything, day or night, I’m your man.” I was no trifle. I remember standing by the phone and debating whether or not to pick up, then doing it. I’d stopped blushing after the fourth one.

            It seemed like every man in town came around except Pastor Burgess. Where was he? Sitting in his office in front of his air conditioning unit with his sleeves rolled up, reading Field and Stream. That’s where he stayed, day after day, every summer, and I could have used a pastor because, Lorraine, strange things were happening to me.

Silver Bottle is available on Amazon and Kindle.