Month two of nontraditional employment. I gotta stop saying I'm unemployed. I'm not making money, but I'm self employed as a writer. If I don't believe it no one will.
It's always strange seeing family during a funeral. You're happy to see them, but hate that it has to be on this occasion. You are there for support, even if that support is downing a couple of bottles of brown liquor with your family. You learn so much. But it is hard. There are laughs shared but damn someone had to die for us to get to here? I get and totally understand family reunions now and may fortunes come down from the sky on any one that plans out family reunions (the only one I've been to, two of my uncles got to fighting. But that's another story). Either way, this got me thinking about another queer story. Hope you enjoy and I hope my ancestors get a good laugh at this recollection.
Uncle Mike was a cool uncle. Sure he had drug problems throughout his life, but he was a favorite of my Grandma's Bea's and so he was my favorite Uncle. . We had that in common, being Grandma Bea's favorites, so that made him automatically cool. He taught me how to shuffle cards too, creating the coveted rainbow flourish of the cards. Uncle Mike lived with Grandma Bea for the longest until...he just didn't. That part is lost to memory. But after that, he never could get back to himself, the guy I knew as a kid.
But like many constant hard drug users, he died really young. I don't think he was even 50 when he died. I'm pretty sure his father, Uncle Giggie (Momma's actual Uncle), attended his funeral which is not how you expect it to ever go. So naturally, my sister and I were going to the funeral.
I recall being in inbetween stages of formal dress during the time. While Momma still tried desperately to dress my sister and I alike, it was getting harder to do because we weren't twins. And with me being older, I guess I was first up to try "grown up" clothes.
I don't know why Momma was adamant about me wearing that knee-length black skirt. It was something she had dragged out of her closet. It wasn't new. It wasn't special. Just plain, black and a bit too tight around my plushy pre-teen body. But it was knee-length and with the original pant suit (yeah, even as kid, I was wearing a pant suit like an 80's youth executive.) not fitting anymore, I was forced to where the skirt.
Maybe it was because this was an item of Momma's closet. Maybe in my subconscious I rejected wearing anything from an adult. Wearing adult clothes meant that you were an adult, and I wasn't near ready for that pressure. I didn't even know what kind of adult I wanted to be yet! I had long discovered the physical disadvantages of wearing a skirt. And probably on a subconscious level I saw how a skirt could open up unwanted attention.
But just like anything a parental imposes upon a child, I went to the funeral in the black skirt ensemble, with a matching black jacket. I felt uncomfortable. I'm sure Uncle Mike would have laughed at me.
We enter the funeral home and have a seat. The room is your typical Black funeral vibe: packed but quiet. Just a small murmur of tears and heavy breaths. We entered with the rest of the family along with me pushing my weeping Grandma Bea in her travel wheelchair. I roll Grandma Bea to the outside of the wooden pew, brake it, and carefully scoot into the pew aisle. Momma sits down first on the pew (bump), Dad next, (bump), my little sister, (bump), and then me (RIIIIIIIIIIPPPPPPPPPP!!!). I freeze. My sister and I lock eyes in a moment that Sis revealed to me recently she sometimes wakes up some nights and giggles about.
It's obvious now if it wasn't before what happened. I ripped the slit in that black skirt straight out. The rip heard round the funeral home!
I couldn't keep it in. I think my brain broke. A small giggle slips from my lips. A tear flows from one of my eyes. Momma seeing that I am about to lose it (and her about to lose it but not in a good way), tells my sister to walk in the back of me to the restroom. Like everyone in the whole chapel didn't hear that rip from the front row.
Sis and I scurry back to the back of the chapel. Once we are in the restroom, she examines the damage. What Momma expected us to do I still have no idea. The dress was ripped to all hell and we were stuck in a funeral home restroom while our Uncle Mike's funeral continued without us.
I don't know what came over us. Maybe it is the shared energy that siblings have. Or the shared energy of giggles. Maybe both energies collided in that moment. Or maybe we both realized how insane the whole situation was. Sis already knew I hated dressing up like this. It was like making the absurd even more absurd.
A few giggles turned into full on cry laughing in the restroom. Bent over giggles turning into escaped laughs. It must have gotten loud because next thing you know we both hear a BAM on the restroom swinging door and soon Momma is standing there in front of us, giving us a look that killed all laughter within a mile. We had embarrassed Momma and that is what you don't do with Black Mommas in the 90's from the South.
I don't recall exactly what Momma said to us in that restroom, but I can giggle about it now, so that probably means she threatened us to within an inch of our lives. She also had safety pins that I'm sure she had dug out of her purse of infinite items. She handed them to Sis (already knowing that I had not the slightest clue of what to do with them), and Momma left, leaving Sis to pin my skirt back long enough to finish the funeral.
I still think the skirt split due to cosmic retribution. Everyone knew I didn't want to wear the damn skirt. And knowing Uncle Mike, he was probably cry laughing too.
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