Love Invents Us - Amy Bloom [38]
Elizabeth went to the funeral as properly dressed as she could stand, expecting warmth and light and a huge, swaying choir of sweet black voices, Mrs. Hill’s community, her people, throwing their arms around Mrs. Hill to take her in and carry her home, laying her head on a soft dark breast.
The funeral parlor was not large. Dusty olive-green velvet drapes hung down behind two tottering plant stands crowned by massive pink and yellow gladioli. The front rows were empty except for a single woman wearing sunglasses, a chic black silk suit, and black patent leather heels. She was the only woman without a hat, with close-cropped natural hair, and when a large church lady in a grey dress and matching jacket and an ivory grey-feathered turban sat down next to her and put one gloved hand on her dark, ringless hand, Elizabeth could see that Dr. Hill was an outsider too. There were no other white people, and Elizabeth headed toward the back, away from the casket, away from the light bouncing off Reverend Shales as he began to rumble informally beneath the organ wheezing through “God Will Take Care of You.”
Someone put a pamphlet in Elizabeth’s hand, and she looked hard at the tiny xeroxed picture of a middle-aged Mrs. Hill frowning back, even then cocking her head a little. The lady in the grey dress got up, smoothed her white gloves, and stood foursquare in the room. She sang “Just a Closer Walk with Thee,” and Elizabeth closed her eyes and tried to feel and smell Huddie in this warm, scented room of brown flesh that was all not him. The voice was sweet and full of feeling, but it was not feeling for Mrs. Hill. It was the singer’s love for her Lord, her powerful, in-the-very-core-of-her-being belief in her personal relationship with her Savior, and it was her devotion to Reverend Samuel C. Shales. Mrs. Hill was only an opportunity to celebrate, and the celebration of this whole world that was not Elizabeth’s and not open to her, the slap-obvious truth that this place was not her home, any more than her mother’s house was, that her only home had been Mrs. Hill’s footstool and Huddie’s narrow bed, made Elizabeth crumple up and cry until one of the ladies beside her, kind and curious, passed her a lace hankie that Elizabeth tried to use without actually soiling it or blowing her nose on it.
Reverend Shales said all life was precious, said something soft-voiced and tender about those who lived in the shelter of the Lords something, and then he swung into it.
“Death reminds us that life is given by God, by God Almighty alone, and life is taken away by God. Live righteously and prepare for Judgment Day. As it has come to Sister Hill, it will come to each and every one of us. Live righteously and be judged righteous, for those that are judged righteous shall sit with the Lord in his heavenly mansions, I say they shall sit at the right hand of God in his glorious, heavenly home, and they, the righteous among us, shall feast at the heavenly banquet.”
The women around her began to shift and nod, and Elizabeth could see Mrs. Hill nodding to herself, rooting around in the pork rind bag until she found the really crispy, curlicued ones.
Reverend Shales rose on his tiptoes, thundering now, and the chairs rocked on a tide of Amen and Yes, Lord. Elizabeth saw the straight, lean back of Dr. Hill and hoped that it was rigid with outraged love and the knowledge that Mrs. Hill was not in this place, not even held temporarily in that mauve pearlized casket.
“For those who don’t live right, fornicators, adulterers, liars, thieves, gossips, the impure, the immoral, the amoral, those who refuse to give their hearts to the Lord and those, even worse, who gave their hearts to the Lord and turned their backs on Him—backsliders and disbelievers—they will burn forever in a lake of fire. Because, be not deceived, brothers and sisters, God is not mocked. For whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.…”
The organ came in on cue and everyone stood, up as the lady in grey sang again, sang the only hymn Mrs. Hill had ever sung, in her