Blue

            When I was a child, my grandmother would take me to the cemetery. Together we would lay flowers by graves of the people she grew up hearing stories about. They were the people whose graves her mother laid flowers by and the people who her grandmother buried. When we were done, we would pass through the granite cemetery gate and go home.
            Home was a blue house by the creek bed where we lived with my grandfather. He spent most of his time outside; Grandma spent hers in the kitchen, cooking for the multitudes. I often wondered if she realized her fate, if she knew that when God first conceived her as an image in His mind, He pictured the bread flour blood drawing lines through the palms of her hands. I think she only pictured flour in her hair when she thought about the way God looked at her, like subservience was something she’d recently acquired instead of something that made her whole. When I think of my childhood, I see her there, in the kitchen, padding out biscuits with her hands, hair tightly in a bun, whitened from the years, not the bread flour.
            Grandpa’s hair, on the other hand, was very dark when I was a child and didn’t whiten until I got older. One day while he was reading the paper, I turned to him and realized his hair looked tinted white, as if for him old age was a required afterthought. Even on the day he died, Grandpa resisted old age. He died in the tobacco field, a fate he did pick, and the day he died, there were still black hairs on top of his head.
            Aunt Sarai said he kept his hair short so people wouldn’t know that it was still dark, but I don’t think she’s right. Grandpa liked to rub it in other people’s noses that he was still so young. Why else would a seventy-seven-year-old man die working a tobacco field? Uncle Caleb said after Grandpa cut his final row, he took his cutting knife and whirled it around his head, yelling like an Indian until he fell back. The last thing they saw was this blur of blue as his overalls and the sky melted together.
            Before the funeral, Grandma made Aunt Sarai wash her hair twenty times to try and get out all the flour. The deaths of her friends, her family, the people she knew as a child, they never made her feel her age. Now, with Grandpa gone, she knew she was old and cried to Aunt Sarai that it simply wasn’t right. He cheated, she said.
            How’s that? Aunt Sarai wanted to know.
            It wasn’t like Grandma thought they were supposed to die together. They lived two separate lives, together in the same house. I suppose when they were young, they loved one another, and they had certainly learned to keep loving in the meantime, but the life they shared was substantial, not saccharine.

            Grandma simply missed the funeral because she didn’t want folks to see what an old wife Grandpa had. You’re no such thing, Aunt Sarai said, and I don’t want to hear it anymore. Now put on your good black dress and get yourself ready for that funeral. But Grandma won and we told the neighbors she’d thrown out her back. Poor thing, said Mrs. Allen from the church. She seemed to be in such good form just this last time I came to visit.
            But then again, so did Luke, said Mr. Allen. Never seen a man that old cut a row so quick. Caleb said he didn’t slow a bit either, right up to the end. Wish I had a hand who could cut tobacco as quick as Luke Samson. Get my fields done in half the time.
            Is that all you think about? Mrs. Allen pressed herself against me. We’re so sorry about
your loss, my dear. If there’s anything we can do, anything at all.
            One right after the next, the people of Sinking Fork formed a line with their words. Mrs. Lanier: If y’all need somethin’ now, you hear? Mr. Lanier: Could cut the hell out of a row of tobacco. The row kept on, bodies pressing themselves hard against me, swelling my nostrils with perfume and the smell of baby powder. The row wound around the cemetery, stretching from the tombstone on and out, past the granite gate, finally tapering into a line as thin as tobacco smoke melting into the horizon. People I’d never seen before, people in black coats and white shirts, skirts made of cotton and heels that pressed hard into the ground. Better watch where you step, Mrs. Allen said, pushing herself into Mrs. Lanier, don’t want to track mud in their house later.
            Then to that house, where Grandma’s presence was heard, not seen, and Aunt Sarai asked no one please go into the bedroom, Momma’s resting, still down with her back, you know.
            Of course, my dear, Mrs. Allen scraping mud off the sole of her high heeled shoes, then pressing her way through the door. Now, what can I do to help?
            In the corner, men stood waiting for the women to bring out the food, to eat in memory of the dead and the living. The children moved in and out between their legs. Don’t y’all make a mess in Mrs. Samson’s house now. Mrs. Allen balanced sausage balls and vegetable trays, blue cheese dressing and pigs in blankets. She’s down with her back and Sarai’ll have to clean it up.

            Meanwhile, Grandma stood before the bedroom mirror picking at her hair strands, one after the next, scraping away like they had paint on them, stretching her hands over her scalp and shaking it back and forth. If I could only get this flour out, she said, if I could get it out of my hair, I’d go out there and show my respects. They ought to tell you cooking’ll do this to you. Somebody ought to warn you so you can wear a hair net or one of those hats like the cooks do in town.
            You’re just old, I could tell Aunt Sarai wanted to say, you’re just old Momma, but instead she said, Momma, you want me to wash it again?
            So after everybody left, they went into the kitchen and Aunt Sarai held Grandma’s head over the sink. Dishes rose high on the tablecloth, making piles between the flour stains. I was in the living room, straightening up, getting the mud off the floor and could hear them. Grandma’s age was falling on her so hard she was almost crying. Aunt Sarai had a kind of patience I’d never seen before, saying, Momma, I’ll wash your hair as much as you want. It was unlike her, beside her, to exercise such patience. But, Momma, I really don’t think you’re going to get any more of it out. Finally, Grandma gave up and went to her room.
            The days after that went in a blur. Food kept coming like that line of people at the cemetery, starting with casseroles in the kitchen, fruit baskets in the parlor, then on to the cakes and pies left sitting on the patio. This was how the people of Sinking Fork showed their support, with these physical reminders coming from women in the middle of their errands: I really can’t stay, no, no, I’ve got to go to town, just wanted to drop this off for your grandma. Is her back any better at all? And so they kept coming, delivering more food than you could imagine, so much food Grandma didn’t go near the kitchen for a week.

            When she finally did come back, she did so angrily, punching the biscuits instead of padding them out, yanking the dough and thrusting it away from her bowl. The biscuits she made tasted bitter, like she’d put in too much cream of tartar, and they were thin, like she had left out some of the flour. She kept the kitchen neater, cleaned up after herself more, and swept away any flour that fell on the floor. Are you afraid you’ll get more of it in your hair, I asked one day.
            Don’t have any flour in my hair; I’m just old, old is all. She sounded like Aunt Sarai the day before the funeral. Can’t wash the years out of me. The defeat in her voice bounced off the kitchen’s powder blue walls and into the living room where Grandpa used to read the paper.
            You’re not old, Grandma, or at least not any older than you should be. We all get old.
            Not me. I didn’t plan on getting old. She thrust the broom about, making broad, bold stripes across the kitchen floor. We weren’t going to get old, your grandpa and me. Not until we had to.
            And when was that going to be?
            Sometime. But not today or yesterday or anytime we could think of. Not us. Imogene Allen. Si Lanier. All those people down at the church. They could break hips and throw out backs and get as old as they wanted. But we weren’t going to get old with them. Her words beat a rhythm with the swish of the broom, big, bold stripes across the floor measuring the linoleum in broad, rectangular pieces. Wide-broom brush-stripes, kicking up dust too small to see. But everybody gets old, I guess. Everybody.
            Everybody, I agreed.
            Do you remember, she said, stopping her strokes and resting her chin on the broom handle, when I would take you to the cemetery? Those people were dead before I was born, but somehow they never managed to get old. Momma said they never got old. I suppose I always pictured your children going to my grave, saying Momma said she never got old.
            I reached into the bowl, thrusting my fingers deep in the dough. I can say that, Grandma. Years later, I can still say that, shutting my eyes to see the long, tobacco smoke line of mourners coming once more to display grief in blacks and navy blues. A long, long line of mourners, weaving in and out through the tombstones, past the granite gate. Mrs. Allen: Poor thing, she never did get old. Mr. Allen: Could make one hell of a biscuit, she could. Wish I had a wife who could make biscuits like that. I’d eat twice as many.
            The cakes piled higher on the porch and some of the casseroles even had to be given away. I went to live with Aunt Sarai and at night, I would look through the door crack and see her standing before the mirror, trying to scrape the white off of her hair strands like paint. In the morning, Aunt Sarai stood there, running her hands over her scalp and shaking her hair, mumbling Momma cheated.
            How’s that, I answered back.
            It wasn’t as if she expected Grandma to live forever. Aunt Sarai had watched her get weaker, hair changing from black to white. It’s just that she didn’t expect death to take Grandma so soon. Don’t you have to get old before you can die, scraping the white with her thumbnail. I can’t go to the funeral. Tell them I threw out my back.
            Then later, mourning Aunt Sarai, laying flowers on my grandparents’ graves, changing blossoms before they could wither, making a line in my mind of youth upon youth, never ending.

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