“Oh, and another thing,” Queenie said as Doll hurried past them to answer the door. “I expect that doorbell gone be ringing every few minutes. The second word gets out that Miss Fannie has passed, people gone start dropping off food.”
Doll came into the kitchen holding a brown paper bag. “Mr. Rainold done sent a honey-glazed ham over. Right good-sized one, from the looks of it.”
Ibby wiped a tear from her cheek. “Before I forget. Mr. Rainold said that Fannie wanted you each to have something from the house, so take whatever you like.”
Queenie pointed toward the front parlor. “Miss Fannie, she been real kind to us over the years. Real generous. But if you don’t mind, I know Crow be delighted to take that big TV off your hands.”
“It’s yours,” Ibby said. “Doll, what about you?”
Doll wrinkled her nose in a thinking sort of way. “I believe I’d like to have me that bust of Miss Fannie that’s in the upstairs hall.”
Queenie scrunched up her face as if it were the most ridiculous thing she’d ever heard. “What you want that ugly thing for? They a reason she put that upstairs, you know, so nobody have to look at it.”
“Can’t explain it, Mama. Just kind of growed on me over the years. Less, a course, you want it, Miss Ibby.”
Ibby waved her hand. “You’re welcome to it.”
“Where you gone put that thing? Not in my living room!” Queenie balked. “Nosiree, not in my house.”
“Don’t worry, Mama, I find a good place for it,” Doll said.
“It better be a place out a my sight,” Queenie said. “That all I ask. It give me a heart attack just thinking about it.”
On Thursday morning, a limousine showed up to take them to the church. When they arrived, there was a waiting line to get into the front door.
“Lawd, look at all them people,” Queenie said as the limo turned the corner. “Think the whole city done showed up.”
“So much for a small funeral,” Doll added.
They were escorted through a side door to a private chapel to wait for the service.
“Look at that,” Ibby said, pointing to a sign over the door. “The Frances Bell Chapel. Fannie donated a chapel to the church. I wonder why she never told anybody about it.”
It was a beautiful little chapel with stained-glass windows and embroidered cushions on the pews.
“I bet they is a lot she never told nobody about,” Queenie said. “Could have lived to be a hundred, and we still wouldn’t know what she was all about.”
At precisely ten-thirty, a deacon led them into the church filled with music being played by a harpist and instructed them to sit in the front row. Fannie’s closed casket, decorated with a mound of white lilies, rested on a cloth-draped gurney at the bottom of steps that led up to the altar.
“I wish T-Bone could have been here,” Ibby whispered to Queenie. “That’s the one thing missing. Fannie would have loved for him to play at her funeral.”
“I know, baby. He would have liked that, but there was just no way to get him back in time,” Queenie said.
As the preacher came down the aisle carrying a cross atop a wooden pole, a soloist in the choir balcony began to sing “Amazing Grace.” When she finished, the preacher took his place behind the pulpit.
“Please stand.” He raised his arms. “We are here to honor the passing of a very great lady. . . .”
The rest of his words were a blur, but the first ones stuck with Ibby.
We are here to honor a very great lady.
After a sermon, the preacher said, “Fannie’s granddaughter, Ibby, has asked Saphronia Trout to say a few words. Saphronia?”
Queenie scooted out of the pew and made her way up the steps. The preacher stepped aside, and Queenie came up and stood behind the pulpit.
“Hello, everybody.” She poked at the microphone, testing it to make sure it was on. “Miss Ibby asked me to say a few words about her grandmother, but I don’t know if just a few would be enough to say what I want to say about Miss Fannie.”
Queenie’s remark caused a buzz of laughter to erupt in the church.
“Miss Fannie, she were like no other lady I ever met,” Queenie went on. “I worked for her for over forty years, which is why Miss Ibby asked me to say something about her. I knew her longer than just about anybody here, with a few exceptions.” She nodded at Kennedy and Sister Gertrude. “But I think we can all agree, Fannie lived her life the way she wanted to. She didn’t worry about what other people thought. That’s because she didn’t need to. She was a giving-back kind of person, and each person she touched”—she pointed at the audience—“and you know who you are, will always remember it. That’s why just about everybody in this church is here, she touched all of you in some way.”
Ibby wept softly as she listened.