No, that wasn’t the right thing to feel, or even think, let alone say—forget about doing it. So nothing. No genuine reactions. Acting all zombified made things easier and harder at the same time. Thank you for coming, Bethella. Oh, I’m hanging in there. Yes, it’s terrible. Eddie doesn’t understand and I don’t know what to say to him. I mean, which parts do I explain, and how much? Yes, justice. Justice won’t bring him back any quicker than sorry, she thought. In Louisiana, a Negro could find a igloo faster than justice.
At church, with Eddie gripping her gloved hand, all them flower crosses looking blurry behind her veil, Darlene thinking ’bout the morgue, and ’bout that damn piece of driftwood inside that coffin. Eddie looked up and asked how they know his daddy in there, and she laughed a little ’cause she ain’t know neither and couldn’t bring herself to say nothing. If Eddie had seen that charcoal thing with its sickening face in that casket he wouldn’t believe it had nothing to do with his daddy neither. Didn’t no words come to her, she gone back to staring at the picture on the program, and fortunately Leticia Bonds from the beauty shop start singing “Take My Hand, Precious Lord” right then. She had the type of voice that made you think she gonna be a star someday.
Later, when they putting Nat in the ground, Darlene squeeze Eddie’s hand a little tighter and he turnt his eyes down to the casket, and she ain’t feel that Eddie had a grip on her hand no more, but that she had tumbled into a grave herself and be grasping at his forearm, tryna keep herself from getting inside that box next to that black log. She wanted to hold that damn log and stroke it like it still Nat, or like something of him had stayed inside it, even if it crumbled in her arms. As if she could still pull her face right up close to his after he had fell asleep, the way she used to did every night, and kiss him and breathe in his breath.
With Nat gone, she wasn’t no person no more. She hadn’t lost a part of herself, she lost the whole motherfucking thing. Bad labels came into her mind ’bout herself, and all of em stuck, ’cause she had stole Nat from somebody else, and ’cause of the standing around at the store in them yellow shoes, and ’cause of the migraine, and ’cause of who she was.
Even when her neighbors pressured the police and they found out ’bout a group of white men that ain’t had no alibis, Miss Darlene couldn’t be thinking ’bout what they done. They was just white boys doing what come natural in the place they from—down south, white boys be hunting Negroes like lions be hunting gazelles out in the goddamn Serengeti. Hell, the damn cops still did it theyself. Darlene focused on the part that she played in the process, how if she hadna stood around in them shoes and gotten that migraine, etc., if Nat hadna insisted on putting his clothes on and going down there, he wouldna been there for them boys to broke his legs and head and toss his ass on the floor like dog meat while they splashing kerosene everyplace like the Devil’s cologne and then lighting they ever-loving matches and gone to sit in they cars. Sitting there like they television done broke and that’s the substitute for Disney’s Motherfucking Magic Kingdom.
But even in that hot-ass courtroom, Darlene couldn’t conjure up no hatred for nobody but herself while them boys’ steady stream of Yes sirs and No sirs ringing out against the walls, and the brutality be showing under they cool smiles and they polite chitchat with one another, even the women, even the judges. In the heat, them boys dabbing they foreheads with handkerchiefs and adjusting they ties, but you could tell they vicious bloodthirsty motherfuckers inside. They ain’t stir at all when they lawyer used the word coloreds and a couple of black folk up in the balconies grunted a complaint. One of em, a older man, be cleaning his damn fingernails while the lawyer describing the whole of everything Nat had gone through to turn his ass to charcoal. Them good ol’ boys treat they own trial like they was toddlers that had got accused of stepping on a ant by accident.
If any of it woulda made a difference, Darlene mighta paid more attention. It ain’t surprise her or move her none when the judge threw the case out ’cause the damn prosecution ain’t had enough evidence to convict, ’cause why would they bother to find enough evidence?
She ain’t feel nothing when the fathers and they boys filed out with they crew-cut heads sticking out them stiff white dress shirts, hugging they wives and mothers like they done saved something precious that the evil Darlene had tried to take from em. Darlene said to herself, Let them go back to their guns and their private clubs. Nothing will bring Nat back, and killing or jailing somebody else’s husband or son would only burn everybody’s wounds deeper.
She let other folks talk to the reporters—people who felt more outraged than she did ’cause they ain’t done nothing to cause the events. They ain’t know and they never would know how it felt.
Eddie ain’t need a mother who had did that to a father, a bitch who murdered husbands with her headaches. She let Bethella take him to Houston sometime, for the days right after they killed Nat, and later when she start tryna find work. Oftentimes, she couldn’t bring herself to go get him, so she didn’t, and he stayed with Bethella longer. Eddie needed Bethella’s strictness and her discipline, Darlene said—she thought it gonna influence him positively. Whenever Darlene took care of Eddie after what happened, she let him jump on the furniture, bought him ice cream and cake, drove him wherever he wanted to go, let him stay home from school—once she even stole a wind-up toy boat for the bath ’cause at the time she couldn’t pay, but she felt bad and stereotypical behind that immoral action too, even though she done it for a good reason. She wasn’t ’bout to deny that Eddie deserved every last thing he wanted; it hurt him when he couldn’t get things, and she couldn’t watch him suffer for one blessed minute. It woulda hurt more to explain the why-nots. He the innocent one.