AS BRIGGS PASSED through Daly City I recovered from the complete unraveling of my mind. The tick of my heart didn’t echo through my ears nearly as loud as it did just thirty minutes earlier and the knots through my shoulders relaxed once I leaned back on the headrest. Most of the time the badgering voice wins, but today, today it just couldn’t, I couldn’t let her win.
Kean turned into Cypress Lawn Cemetery, prettified by a massive white marble archway and well kept rolling hills of manicured green lawns, suddenly I realized Sybil had been born into privilege. For some reason, I visualized Sybil being buried in a decrepit, unkempt, unmarked cemetery. Sure I grew up in San Francisco, and I knew we buried our dead in Colma, a town that had more real estate for the dead than the alive, but it had been very few and far between times that I actually went into a cemetery. My only point of reference was the ones in scary movies. Besides that, I’ve never actually seen someone buried in a cemetery, I didn’t even go to see my grandma buried.
My skin was hot, the car had become stifling as we drove the narrow roads. I desperately wanted to peel the pain from every cell in my body and bury it in Sybil’s grave. Leave the last bit of expectation where it all started, tucked below the surface of who I was. Life would be so much easier if I was numb.
Briggs pulled to the side as he scanned the sprawling lawn cluttered with a small group of people huddled around an open square grave. Suddenly, there wasn’t a moment to catch my breath or think about how I was going to react. All I had were tiny pieces of my own awareness that I was here and up there on those rolling hills across the narrow road was Sybil’s body motionless in a casket.
I looked back at Briggs and watched him curl his bottom lip in between his teeth as he struggled to recognize any of the people dressed in black. My heart exploded into a hyper rhythm as I noticed him narrowing his eyes. I looked back up and saw Martie sitting behind a polished, dark wooden casket. Standing next to her was a minister, the Bible in one hand as he flicked a stick with holy water from the other. Finality flowed through my veins . . . done and over. It looked like the minister was setting her soul free.
I kept watching Martie’s reaction. Call it morbid, but I wanted to see her grieve. Cry as hard as I did when I lost the only person who accepted me as family. But her reaction was unemotional, nothing, like the whole process of burying Sybil was extremely inconvenient. Hunched over, next to her was an older man with a crooked back. He was thin and drawn, looked like he was too fragile for his old worn bones to carry his body. He held Martie’s hand and the hand of an equally frail woman seated on the other side of him. I assumed this was all that was left of Sybil’s family. Each of them carried the same stoic expression, as if they were burdened with a daughter and a sister who lost herself to a lifestyle choice that rattled them to their very core and spiked them through their hearts with ice-cold reserve. I know that people grieve in their own way, but these people looked like they were incapable of showing any form of compassion.
I should be standing there grieving for Sybil, not them. Why did death have to be so cold? All death had to do was walk away and leave me to grieve. But death wasn’t simple, it was heartless. It gutted you and drained your veins until they were dry.
I looked back over at Martie and watched as her demeanor changed. Her attention shifted to the grove of Cypress trees across the way. A glint caught in her eyes just about the same time a tiny smirk rolled across her face. I looked over following her gaze straight to the cause of her new-found expression.
What.
The.
Fuck.
As if God didn’t punish me enough, there he was, Shane. He had come here for Martie. Every broken piece of who I was shattered all over again. Forget the idea that I was willing or able to show my face now. There was no way I was going to go up there, look like a damn fool, in front of them. My goodbye, saved for only Sybil, will have to wait until she’s buried six feet under.
“Let’s go, start up the car and head out. I don’t want to go over there. This was a big mistake Key, I shouldn’t have come.”
“What are you talkin’ ‘bout? You and aye are goin’ up there.”
“No, Briggs, really, I think I’ll just come back when nobody’s here. Less chance of a confrontation.”
“Rosie, I ain’t leavin’. If you don’t want to go up there right now, we’ll wait until tey leave. Me and you ‘re gonna wait.”
There was no way Briggs was going to let me win on this, he was just as stubborn as I was when it came to shit like this. So I just watched in agony as Martie slipped away from Sybil’s burial to go be with Shane.
Briggs didn’t miss a beat.
“Oh, Aye, sweet’art now I know why. Tat’s your beau,” he said as he tilted his head and thrust his chin out to the scene between Martie and Shane.
“No, he’s not mine and I don’t wanna talk about it,” I answered.
“Tat’s the guy! He’s the one that chased you through the hospit’l, aye?”
“Yeah, but—”