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Her eyes closed for a second as she took a deep breath. When they opened again, there was a heat there I recognized, but thought I was misinterpreting until she opened her mouth to speak. "Make me feel better, Johnnie," she said, her hand slipping behind my neck and pulling my face toward hers.SevenAmeliaI woke up early, face scratchy and irritated from the tears and eyes swollen half closed. I got up and got dressed, deciding I needed to make an appearance at the funeral home before everyone else showed up. So maybe it seemed like a chicken move, to need to go there so I didn't face Johnnie. And, well, that was part of it. But, more so, I just didn't like the idea of breaking down in front of people. My grief wasn't a public commodity. They didn't get the right to buy and sell my feelings. I didn't want them sitting over finger sandwiches at Ben's mother's house, gossiping about whether I was crying enough or too much, speculating about what kind of relationship I really had with the decedent. It was unseemly and disgusting and I wanted nothing to do with it.
So I dressed in a black tea-length skirt and tank top, grabbed a snow globe and headed out the door. The snow globe wasn't some kind of inside joke or secret between friends. The snow globe represented a part of my life I had kept from everyone; a part of myself I had only ever felt comfortable enough to share with Ben. He knew all the dark corners and cobwebs of the skeleton-filled closets of my past. And, quite honestly, I felt like I was burying the ability to share those things along with Ben. So it was fitting to bury him with the snow globe from the state where I had grown up.
After I left the funeral home, I went straight to my office, needing a place I could be objective and not bothered. I had to write my speech for the funeral service. And, quite frankly, it was going to take a lot of thought. My feelings about Ben were all over the place. Because, despite knowing some of the awful things he had done to his son, I still couldn't help the fact that I loved him. What did that say about me? Was I a horrible person for loving someone who was capable of that kind of blind cruelty? Or, perhaps, did it say I was a bigger person for accepting someone's past mistakes and acknowledging their potential for change? I honestly had no idea. All I knew was, my heart hurt. There was an aching hollowness underneath my left breast and my hand kept resting there, trying to push the feeling away, but it was there to stay. So I grabbed a piece of paper and a pen and I wrote what I felt.
It wasn't poetry. It wasn't the most eloquent and well thought-out speech in history, but it was real and raw and it was a small piece of me I was giving the rest of the people in town.
That night, I went home and cried again. I cleaned my apartment. I baked food to drop off at Harriet's like a good southern girl should. Then I showered and cried some more. Finally, sometime close to dawn, I slept.
I woke up feeling wrung out and spacey, slipping into a black dress and flats, braiding my hair, and not even bothering with makeup. I couldn't bring myself to sit in the church with everyone else and their fake grief. I stood in the shadows of the doorway to the back of the church, listening to the services, taking little to no comfort in the words. I took the podium when I was called, my insides all feeling like they were shaking, rattling up against one another, knocking like spoons in strong arms with loose wrists. My eyes found my support group, the only people who could understand where my words were coming from, and I spoke to them.
When my clumsy tongue tripped over the words about him making amends for his wrong doings, but not all of them, my eyes helplessly sought Johnnie, despite my better sense. I had no doubt that, given some more time, Ben would have tried to reach out to his son; he would have tried to make right. I knew that down to my bones and I wanted Johnnie to know that too, despite my shallow angry feeling toward him about how easily he replaced me. That was besides the point anyway.
Finished, I fled the altar and the church as a whole, driving to the cemetery with a weighted feeling inside. I listened to Father Sanders with a detached sort of interest, focusing mostly on the way the weight inside felt like it was dragging me down, like there was a magnet somewhere deep in the earth where Ben was soon to take residence, like it was begging me to follow suit. Confused and scared by the sensation, my head raised, eyes blurry with tears, to seek a face of comfort, someone to help shoulder the burden before it broke me down completely. My traitorous eyes looked automatically for Johnnie for reasons I didn't understand and didn't want to try to analyze. But when they found him, well, his hand was wrapped up in the hand of the girl from his apartment and the sinking feeling intensified until I looked away. I fought the urge to sink to my knees, praying every second for the service to be over so I could run.
Everyone started to move away and I felt the sob break free, feeling like it broke my ribcage with its effort and I wrapped my arms around my middle, feeling the need to hold myself together, bending forward slightly to do so. As such, I didn't see him move.
"Hey angel," his voice reached me as his hand touched my arm. My head snapped up, seeing nothing but a soul-deep concern in his deep green eyes. And everything that was left of my walls positively cracked and crumbled.
