How the Soul Sings

Chapter Five

Chapter Five

            There was a memorial service held at the First Baptist Church for Caesar right before the Fourth of July. I sat in the first row right next to Grandma Evee, on the very end with the rest of the Hutchens, as though I was an adopted daughter. First Baptist was a Negro church, but Grandma Evee and Willa Jane had been hauling me there since I was knee-high to a grasshopper, feeling like it was their duty to get some religion into me. It was just assumed, I guess, by the rest of the congregation that I was supposed to be there for one reason or another. Momma didn’t go to church and Aunt Loraine was Catholic; she accepted that I was going to be pretty much raised a Southern Baptist thanks to Evee, but she still expected me to go with her every Christmas Eve for Midnight Mass.

Momma, on the other hand, couldn’t bring herself to have a service for my brother, Aaron. She said she could feel it in her bones, clear down to her core that he was still alive and she forbid my aunt from arranging anything, too.

But then there’d be days I’d find her secretly weeping or burst out crying over the dishes. Willa Jane would to nod to Evee and pat my Momma on the shoulder whenever she found her like that. Aunt Loraine would whisk me out of the room, asking me to do some random task or chore around the farm that usually didn’t need tending to or really made any sense at times. Willa Jane did better than Momma about hiding her grief or at least seemed to keep it together a lot better, but there were moments with her, too, where she and Momma would be locked in a hug, crying over their boys.

Even though my momma wouldn’t let there be any sort of service for my brother, again, swearing that he was still alive, the deathly quiet and stillness around our house told otherwise. It was like a funeral every day of the week, minus the flowers. Momma and Aunt Loraine, who usually were full of chatter come suppertime, said hardly a word. Daniel and I took to eating our food out in the living room in front of the TV, amazingly with no objections, except Willa Jane. She came in one day and saw crumbs on the floor and a couple of drops of dried gravy on the Persian rug. I about never heard the end of it. She went on and on to Evee about it. I told her that we’d be more careful and that I’d clean it up next time.

“Yes, you show will. Now don’t you be takin’ advantage of yo’ Momma. Jus’ cuz she ain’t said nothin’, yet, done mean it’s ok.” Willa Jane finished with the screen door loudly clapping behind her in a whirlwind of fury.

“Oh she don’ mean to be so mad, honey. She just upset like the rest of us about them boys bein’ gone and is dealin’ with it dif’rently is all.” Evee says from across the kitchen. Even in her limited sight, she could tell I was left standing there, stunned with my jaw hanging. Willa Jane had never been angry or even remotely cross with me in my entire life.  I didn’t think that she was ever capable of getting mad. I needed to go outside to tend to the chickens, but was afraid we’d cross paths and she’d go off and yell at me some more.  Worse, I was afraid she’d tell my momma that I had been some sort of pain in the butt and then I’d have a pain in the butt after she got through with whipping me good. “What you afraid of, girl?” I suddenly hear Evee say.

“Huh?”

“I aint’ heard ya move. You must be bothered by somethin’.”