“The baby looks like it’s growing pretty good,” she hollers from the back.
“Yes, ma’am,” I says. No one has said nothing about the baby but I guess, since she knows I’m gonna have a husband to go with it, it’s OK to mention now.
“You lucky you got such small feet,” Mrs. Jackson says coming back into the main room with a shoe box. “I don’t carry many shoes but I did have these.”
“I don’t got enough for shoes,” I says.
“Try them on and hush up,” she says.
I pat myself on the back for having the intelligence to wash up before I came here. Sometimes smelling good can make all the difference. Mrs. Jackson brings me a chair and I sit, trying on the shoes like a lady would. When I get them on she helps me up.
“Look at you,” she murmurs.
“Do I look all right?”
“Your poor mother,” she says.
“I only got sixty-three dollars,” I says.
“And here it is 1963,” she says.
I pick up my pocketbook, fish through it and hold the bills in my hand.
“Can you promise me something?”
“Whut?”
“Don’t go telling all of Lincoln, Texas, how you got yrself a hundred-thirty-dollar dress and a pair of twenty-dollar shoes off of Mrs. Jackson for sixty-three dollars. People would accuse me of playing favorites.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She takes the money from me, counting it quickly, then sticking it underneath the pincushion on her wrist. “And when I say don’t tell no body I mean don’t tell no body, you hear? If word gets back to Mr. Jackson, Lord today, I won’t never hear the end of it.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Now turn around and style it for me,” she says.
I tell the baby to stay small again. It stays small. I turn all the way around one way then around the other way.
“I look all right?”
“You as pretty as you can be,” she says. “Just as pretty as you can be.”
This next song I’ma sing is a song I wrote about a man I used to know. It’s called “Big Hole Blues.”
My man is digging in my dirt
Digging a big hole just for me.
He’s digging in my dirt
Digging a big hole just for me.
It’s as long as I am tall, goes down as deep as the deep blue sea.
He says the hole he’s digging is hole enough for two.
He says the hole he’s digging is hole enough for two.
He says he’ll put me down there in it
And put my boyfriend in it too.
He says he’s just pulling my leg, but I got to play it safe
He says he’s just pulling my leg, but I got to play it safe
I done packed up all my clothes, I’m gonna leave this big old holey place.
Everybody’s got a Hole. Ain’t nobody ever lived who don’t got a Hole in them somewheres. When I say Hole you know what I’m talking about, dontcha? Soft spot, sweet spot, opening, blind spot, Itch, Gap, call it what you want but I call it a Hole. To get the best of a situation you gotta know a man’s Hole. Everybody’s got one, just don’t everybody got one in the same place. Some got a Hole in they head. Now, you may think “Hole in the head” is just another way of saying stupid, but “Hole in the head” means more than that. It means that they got a lack and a craving for knowledge. Not just the lack, now, but the craving too. A man could have a Hole just about anywheres: in the head, in the wallet (which means he burns his money), in the pocket (which means he don’t got no money to burn but would like some), in the pants, in the guts, in the stomach, in the heart. You offer a person with a Hole in the head some knowledge and they gonna be in yr pocket cause you done gived him the opportunity to taste what he craves, but if a person’s got a Hole in they heart and you offer them knowledge, you won’t be able to sway them none. A Hole-in-the-heart person craves company and kindness, not no book.
I’ve never seen a girl so happy as Billy Beede walking out my store right now with her wedding dress and them matching shoes all wrapped up in my white store box. Mr. Jackson can say what he likes but it’s the formal-wear business that’s about making people happy. He says the funeral business is about making people happy but I’ve never seen no one smiling at a funeral. He doesn’t think Lincoln’s got the economy to support a formal-wear store and, tell the truth, I don’t turn a profit. If it weren’t for people dying, we would be out on the street. But, seeing as how folks do continue to die, I can, every once in awhile, afford to sell a hundred-thirty-dollar dress and a pair of twenty-dollar shoes for sixty-three dollars. Seeing as how the Funeral Home is doing so well, and folks is always continuing to die, and Jackson’s is the most respected Home, black or white, in the county, which means folks come out of their way to have us help them in their time of grief, and seeing as how Billy has her dead mother buried all the way out in Who-Knows-Where, Arizona, and seeing as how her Mr. Snipes, the man Jackson says is trash, has done right and asked her to marry him, I figure I can sell my showcase dress for the price she can afford.
Laz is gonna be broken up about it. He’s had his cap set on Billy Beede for the longest. Too long, I told him when he said he’d seen her running with Snipes. Much too long, Mr. Jackson said when we all seen Billy’s belly. Just cause you set your cap on someone, don’t mean she’ll set her cap on you.
You have to make the best of what God gives you, that’s what I say. That’s how I live my life. Married Jackson when I was not but fifteen. I was in the family way, but not like Billy Beede. My Israel had already spoken for me, and my mother and dad both were living. I was showing but I could walk around this town with my head up. Not like Billy Beede: shoulders pinched together, her head hanging down like a buzzard.
Me and Israel didn’t plan on getting married so early but we did. I had hoped to have a slew of girls. We had two boys. I had hoped Siam-Israel would run the Funeral Home with Israel, and Laz would be a doctor and deliver babies. That woulda dovetailed nicely, you know, cradle to grave with the funeral business we’ve already got. Nothing worked out like I hoped. Siam is doing time over at Huntsville and Laz, well let’s just say that Laz is doing his best. Doing the best with what we got. That’s the most that any of us can ask.
They call me bulldagger, dyke, lezzy, what-have-you. I like my overalls and my work boots. Let them say what they want. It don’t bother me none.
I take the letter back from Teddy. We’re still waiting here on his porch for Billy. She ain’t come back yet.
“Billy’ll be home directly,” Teddy says.
I lean my chair, tipping it back to balance on the two hind legs, like a stallion rearing up. Then I right the chair and get on my feet. “I don’t got no time to waste,”