Dre was the one who found her. He went by her place and discovered she’d died in her sleep. Then he came over to my place and told me the news with tears in his eyes. I drove to the hospital to identify her body, and called the funeral home to pick her up. Afterward, I went back to my apartment, sat on my white sofa, and tried to make myself cry.
Mama’s dead, I thought. Dead. Dead and gone. Dead as a doorknob . . .
I blinked hard. But my eyes stayed dry, which made me feel even worse. What kind of child doesn’t cry for their own dead mama? I thought maybe some music might help me get into my emotions, so I put Whitney Houston’s “Didn’t We Almost Have It All” on repeat, leaned back, and closed my eyes.
“Didn’t we almost have it ALLLLLLLLL!” I sang, getting swept up by the beauty of Whitney’s voice. Then I caught myself. This ain’t a damn sing-along, I thought. You need to get to grieving.
I tried picturing Mama’s face. But the only image that popped into my brain was of Mama throwing her head back and gulping down her gin, which didn’t bring tears to my eyes, either.
A memory came to me. I was back in third grade, in Miss Thompson’s class, and we were getting ready for the school’s annual Black History Month show. Every kid in the show had to dress up like a famous black person we admired. My enemy Mercedes was going as Diana Ross; her homegirl, Porsha, was Aretha. Those two bitches thought they had the best parts, but I knew I was really someone special: I was Corretta Scott King; my granddaddy would have been proud. I made a costume out of Mama’s winter coat with the fake fur collar, and a big black pocketbook that Dre stole from the Goodwill. Miss Troup helped me write a speech. “My name is Missus Corretta Scott King,” it began. “I am the loving wife of Doctor Martin Luther King Junior.” I practiced my lines every afternoon with Miss Troup for a week and then, the day before the show, I stood in the living room and begged Mama to come.
“There’s a Black History show at my school,” I said, handing her the flyer.
Mama was sitting on her dirty sofa, which was also where she sometimes slept, a tangle of bed sheets beside her. On TV, my favorite McDonald’s commercial was playing, the one with the black girls double Dutching and rhyming about Big Macs and Fillet-O-fish. “Shuckin’ and jivin’,” Mama said, nodding at the set. “You see the way these crackers got our babies dancing for them?”
I glanced at the TV and back at Mama. “So can you come to my show?” I asked.
“Yeah,” she said. “Maybe.”
The next afternoon I sat on the makeshift stage in the school cafeteria with the rest of my class, sweating under the weight of Mama’s ratty coat, my heart pounding from nerves. The place was packed with parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles and the little kids. When a skinny boy named Jovan hit the stage, dressed as James Brown in his mamma’s church wig, his daddy jumped to his feet, hollering, “That’s MY boy!” When Porsha tried to sing “Respect,” her mama and all her aunties held up little cameras, flashing away, not even caring that Porsha messed up, singing “R-E-S-C-P-T.” Everybody at Black History had family come out to see them. Everybody except me. Mama never showed.
It occurred to me that maybe it wasn’t my fault I wasn’t crying for my dead mama. Maybe I wasn’t full of grief because Mama hadn’t given me the kind of Special Memories I needed to feel sad about her passing. All she ever gave me was a feeling of being cheated out of love. And she did try to shoot me.
My mind flashed on my own children. When I die, those two better bawl their muthafuckin’ eyeballs out like they supposed to, I thought. Just in case, I made a mental note that as soon as Mama’s funeral was over I’d take Nikia and Ashley out for a day of fun—maybe we’d all go to McDonald’s and the movies—so they’d have something good to cry about when I was dead and gone.
The phone rang. I was so relieved to get a break from the grieving process that I sprinted to the kitchen and picked up after the first ring.
“Hello?” I said.
It was the man from the funeral parlor. “I’m calling to find out when you plan to drop off some clothing for your mother,” he said.
“What you mean?”
“A special dress or favorite outfit would be perfectly fine.”
“But what she need clothes for?” I was still confused.
“Excuse me?”
“You putting her in a coffin, right? She don’t need clothes for that.”
“Miss—” He paused and cleared his throat.
“Yeah?”
“Miss, we don’t bury people in, uh . . . the nude.”
I was only sixteen and had never been to a funeral before, so I didn’t want to argue. But this made no sense. Why would anyone dress a dead body in a perfectly good outfit just to put it in the ground? I told the funeral man I’d bring something over and hung up the phone. Then I pulled on my sneakers and headed to the mall.
I didn’t know what the hell I should get Mama to wear. I’d never seen her in anything fancy when she was alive. All she ever wore was jeans and loud-colored shirts that were fifteen years out of style. I stood at the bottom of the escalator at Macy’s, scanning the store directory, wondering which floor might have fashions from the early seventies. Then it hit me: Mama was going to sleep forever. I should get her a nice set of pajamas.
I took the escalator to the sleepwear department on the third floor and stepped into a sea of pastel-colored flannel. I walked past racks of furry slippers, oversized nightshirts printed with cartoon characters, and big fluffy robes. Mama usually slept in a man’s T-shirt stained with beer, so a matching top-and-bottom pajamas set would be a big step up for her. That’s what I was searching for when my eyes landed on the most beautiful outfit I’d ever seen. I reached out my hand to touch the fabric and it felt as silky as a pig’s ear. I guess you really do get what you pay for, because the price tag said $195.
“Is this for someone special?” asked the saleslady as she folded my purchase in layers of tissue paper.
“For my mama,” I said proudly. “She dead.”