Beautiful Chaos

Cream of Grief

The cream-colored paper was thick and folded eight times, with a purple satin ribbon tied around it. I found it in the bottom drawer of the dresser, just like Aunt Prue said I would. I read it to the Sisters, who argued about it with Thelma until Amma stepped in.

“If Prudence Jane wanted the good china, we’re usin’ the good china. No sense arguin’ with the dead.” Amma folded her arms. Aunt Prue had only been gone two days. It seemed wrong to be calling her dead so soon.

“Next you’ll be tellin’ me she didn’t want fun’ral potatoes.” Aunt Mercy wadded up another handkerchief.

I checked the paper. “She does. But she doesn’t want you to let Jeanine Mayberry make them. She doesn’t want stale potato chips crumbled on the top.”

Aunt Mercy nodded as if I was reading from the Declaration of Independence. “It’s the truth. Jeanine Mayberry says they bake up better that way, but Prudence Jane always said it was on account a her bein’ so cheap.” Her chin quivered.

Aunt Mercy was a mess. She hadn’t done much of anything but wad up handkerchiefs ever since she heard that Aunt Prue had passed. Aunt Grace, on the other hand, had busied herself with writing condolence cards, letting everyone know how sorry she was that Aunt Prue was gone, even though Thelma explained that it was the other folks who were supposed to send them to her. Aunt Grace had looked at Thelma like she was crazy. “Why would they send them ta me? They’re my cards. An’ it’s my news.”

Thelma shook her head, but she didn’t say anything after that.

Whenever there was a disagreement about something, they made me read the letter again. And Aunt Prue’s letter was about as eccentric and specific as my Aunt Prue herself.

“Dear Girls,” the letter began. To each other, the Sisters were never the Sisters. They were always the Girls. “If you’re reading this, I’ve been called to my Great Reward. Even though I’ll be busy meeting my Maker, I’ll still be watching to be sure my party goes according to my specifications. And don’t think I won’t march right outta my grave and up the center aisle a the church if Eunice Honeycutt sets one foot into the building.”

Only Aunt Prue would need a bouncer for her funeral.

It went on and on from there. Aside from stipulating that all four Harlon Jameses be in attendance along with Lucille Ball, and selecting a somewhat scandalous arrangement of “Amazing Grace” and the wrong version of “Abide With Me,” the biggest surprise was the eulogy.

She wanted Amma to deliver it.

“That’s nonsense.” Amma sniffed.

“It’s what Aunt Prue wanted. Look.” I held out the paper.

Amma wouldn’t look at it. “Then she’s as big a fool as the rest a you.”

I patted her on the back. “No sense arguing with the dead, Amma.” She glared at me, and I shrugged. “At least you don’t have to rent a tuxedo.”

My dad stood up from his seat on the bottom stair, defeated. “Well, I’d better go start rounding up the bagpipes.”

In the end, the bagpipes were a gift from Macon. Once he heard about Aunt Prue’s request, he insisted on bringing them in all the way from the Highlands Elks Club in Columbia, the state capital. At least, that’s what he said. Knowing him, and the Tunnels, I was convinced they came from Scotland that same morning. They played “Amazing Grace” so beautifully when folks first arrived that nobody would walk into the church. A huge crowd formed around the front walkway and the sidewalk, until the reverend insisted they all come inside.

I stood in the doorway, watching the crowd. A hearse—a real hearse, not Lena and Macon’s—sat parked out in front of the building. Aunt Prue was being buried in the Summerville Cemetery until His Garden of Perpetual Peace reopened for business. The Sisters called it the New Cemetery, since it had only been open about seventy years.

The sight of the hearse brought back a memory, the first time I saw Lena drive through Gatlin on my way to school last year. I remembered thinking it was an omen, maybe even a bad one.

Had it been?

Looking back on everything that had happened, everything that had brought me from that hearse to this one, I still couldn’t say.

Not because of Lena. She would always be the best thing that had ever happened to me. But because things had changed.

We both had. I understood that.

But Gatlin had changed, too, and that was harder to understand.

So I stood in the doorway of the chapel, watching it happen. Letting it happen, because I didn’t have a choice. The Eighteenth Moon was two days away. If Lena and I didn’t figure out what the Lilum wanted—who the One Who Is Two actually was—there was no way to predict how much more things would change. Maybe this hearse was another omen of things to come.

We had spent hours in the archive, with nothing to show for it. Still, I knew that was where Lena and I would be again, as soon as the funeral was over. There was nothing left to do but try. Even if it seemed hopeless.

You can’t fight fate.

Was that what my mom had said?

“I don’t see my horse-drawn carriage. White horses, that’s what my letter said.” I would’ve known that voice anywhere.

Aunt Prue was standing next to me. No glimmer, no shine. Just plain as day Aunt Prue. If she wasn’t still wearing the clothes she died in, I would’ve mistaken her for one of the guests at her own funeral.

“Yeah, well. We had a little trouble finding one. Since you’re not Abraham Lincoln.”

She ignored me. “I thought I made it clear, I wanted Sissy Honeycutt ta be the one singin’ ‘Amazin’ Grace,’ just like she did at Charlene Watkins’ service. And I don’t see her. But these fellas really put some lung inta it, which I ’preciate.”

“Sissy Honeycutt said we’d have to invite Eunice if we wanted her to sing.” That was explanation enough for Aunt Prue. We turned back to the pipers. “I think it’s the only hymn they know. I’m not sure they’re actually Southern.”

She smiled. “’Course they ain’t.”

The music spun out over the crowd, drawing everyone a few feet closer. I could tell Aunt Prue was pleased, no matter what she said.

“Still, it’s a fine crowd. Biggest one I seen in years. Bigger than all my husbands’ put together.” She looked at me. “Don’t you think so, Ethan?”

I smiled. “Yes, ma’am. It’s a fine crowd.” I pulled on the collar of my tux shirt. In the hundred-degree winter heat, I was about to pass out. But I didn’t tell her that.

“Now, put your jacket on an’ show a little respect for the D-ceased.”

Amma and my dad reached a compromise on the eulogy. Amma wouldn’t deliver it, but she would read a poem. When she finally told us what she was reading, nobody gave it much thought. Except that it meant we got to cross off two items on Aunt Prue’s list at the same time.

“Abide with me; fast falls the eventide,

The darkness deepens, Lord, with me abide.

When other helpers fail and comforts flee,

Help of the helpless, O abide with me.

Swift to its close ebbs out life’s little day;

Earth’s joys grow dim; its glories pass away;

Change and decay in all around I see;

O Thou who changest not, abide with me.”

The words hit me like bullets. The darkness was deepening, and though I didn’t know what the eventide was, it felt like it was falling fast. It wasn’t just comforts that were fleeing, and it was more than Earth’s joys and glories that were passing away.

Amma was right. So was the guy who wrote the hymn. Change and decay was all I could see.

I didn’t know if there was anyone or anything who changest not, but if there was, I would do more than ask them to abide with me.

I wanted them to rescue me.

By the time Amma folded the paper back up, you could’ve heard a pin drop. She stood at the podium, every bit Sulla the Prophet as the original. That’s when I realized what she had done.

It wasn’t a poem, not the way she had read it. It wasn’t even a hymn anymore.

It was a prophecy.