Kids at a Funeral

It's hot, boiling, a standard day in a Texas summer.

My Bugle Boy slacks and OshKosh button down feel damp the moment I step out of my grandma's Cadillac, the newest one out: every five years for the rest of her life, my grandma will always buy the newest Cadillac.

The tombstones sticking out of the freshest dirt, surrounded by green-yellow grass, look to me like unfamiliar things you might find at a playground, next to the jungle gym, near the curly slide.

Just as strange to me, every bit as foreign as the idea of dumping macaroni shells into a bowl of milk and calling it cereal, are all these people. They all know me, or my name at least, 'cause they keep saying it, patting my head as my grandma leads me from one patch of people to another, holding my hand, even though I've been able to walk on my own for quite some time. She says she'll stop holding my hand in public when I'm ten. I always say, Isn't eight old enough?

Other boys and girls here, they all look the same, just like I do. Dressed like I am, in little adult clothes, being paraded for old people to poke at, all of us, every one of us, wondering why we're even here.

This is your uncle blah-blah-blah from yada-yada-yada, and this is your cousin whoever-whoever-whoever from somewhere-somewhere-somewhere and this is your niece stop-stop-stop from please-please-please. But my grandma is determined to introduce me to everyone here, and I can't stop her, I can't stop these old hands from pinching my cheeks, picking me up, hugging me, touching me.

From declaring how cute I am, more handsome than in the pictures they get every Christmas.

From telling me stories about more people I don't know, that happened in places I've never been, and took place before I even knew my ABCs:

Why, your Uncle (blank) caught him a fish this big up there on Lake (blank) back in the winter of (blank).

They must not know, must not realize, that we're all kids, that we won't remember, that we just don't care about anything they have to say. We'd rather be at home playing with our He-Man and GI Joe toys in the backyard, getting dirty on the slip'n'slide made from a garden hose attached by duct-tape to a long blue tarp that has rocks sticking out every few feet, but we run and jump anyway.

They just don't know we'd rather be somewhere else.

But we have to be here instead.

***

A line is forming that leads into the big, open canopy, the shady place with a dead woman on display.

My grandma, she grabs my hand again, squeezing it red, tries to lead me to the line, to make me see the dead. I pull it back, my hand.

I don't want to go in there.

She looks at me. It's the same look my mom gives me when I'm about to be in trouble, but when grandma gives that look it's twice as bad. There is no whining, no running away, there is no chance.

I give her my hand, and she holds it, even tighter than before.

We get in line with everyone else. Once we're under the canopy I can see the casket, almost as tall as I am. From certain angles I catch glimpses of a nose, of eyes, some hair: a cold face I'm being marched in front of, forced to witness, my first dead person.

The other people, the older people, they don't seem scared of her. Some even lean over and kiss this dead woman on the cheek, whisper words, a few even start to cry.

I am supposed to do these things too? For whoever this is, just a shape that will never move again, to me, that's all she is. Am I supposed to cry too?

We're getting closer, only a few more people in front of us.

Run, I want to escape, but my grandma, her grip is so strong. She looks at me, grins, a strange grin, not happy and not mean, but effective.

I'm stuck.

The sunlight that leaks under the canopy makes it all yellow, a soft yellow, like a reading lamp.

My grandma, she pushes me at her, not hard, but she pushes me in front of her, towards the dark wood, the box. I can just barely get my head over the rim, just barely see her, all of her, the last of her before she disappears.

First thought: makeup.

She is bathed in makeup, her face as hard as the tombstones that surround us, her lips as rigid as the names carved. But she's smiling, dead, but smiling big, like Bugs Bunny after he tricks Daffy.

I don't understand.

Nobody else here is smiling, not like she is. I'm not smiling.

Her hands, together, resting softly on her chest, I still don't know why, but I reach out, with one finger, and I touch her hand, feel her skin.

When I do, when I touch the dead lady, my grandma nudges me gently in the back, moves me along, and takes her turn with the lady.

And then I couldn't see her anymore, she was gone.

I'm not sure what number she is on the family tree, how far removed we are. But I don't know who she is, the gray woman whose funeral I've been dragged to. We've never met, until now.

She is my Aunt (blank), my grandma says.

After everything is over, after all the people who want to speak have spoken, after she is lowered into the ground, we all meet up at a barbecue joint down the street from the cemetery.

Outside, at the picnic tables, in their fancy clothes, the adults sit and eat their food, their chicken and pulled pork and hot wings and cornbread. They chew with their mouths closed and use napkins.

The kids, we play. Barbecue sauce smeared on our little cheeks, we play tag, hide and seek, rock-paper-scissors. We wipe our fingers on the back of our pants, thinking the adults won't see the stains there, that we won't get in trouble. We trip, we fall, we get up, and we run some more.

We didn't know any better.

We were kids.

** This story was written a ways back and is loosely based on two funerals that my own grandmother dragged me to when I was young. Like the boy in my story, I had no earthly idea who either of the dead women I saw were. I had never seen, or heard anything about, them before in my life. I still had to go. 

This story was first published in the inaugural issue of The Germ, a small print publication. It is the first time my work has been deemed worthy of real paper, so I took a picture.