Page 50 of Lily In The Valley
“Her name is Kelly,” my dad gruffed, turning and walking to his bedroom.
That night, after everyone else had gone to bed or worn themselves out from crying laughter, I walked onto the back porch with a blanket wrapped on my shoulders. The night air had a humidity that was just thick enough to cling to your skin but not enough to rain. All day, Khalil hovered, worried words fraying the edges of his mind, even though they never left his lips. Making it to the steps that led from the patio to the lush, manicured lawn, Uncle PJ was sitting on the lighted steps, smoking a Black & Mild, his baseball cap pushed back off his forehead. His jacket draped over the railing. He swayed back and forth as he pulled deep inhales from the cigarillo.
“I was wondering when you’d come out,” he said without turning around.
“Mama always said you were psychic,” I said, sitting next to him.
He chuckled once, low, blowing out the smoke around us. I rested my head on his shoulder. The blanket wrapped around my shoulders trailed behind me like a cape I hadn’t earned. We watched the yard in silence for a long time. The stars above were soft and stubborn.
“I’m not going tomorrow,” he said eventually.
My heart dropped. I didn’t turn to him right away. Just stared out at the grass. “What? Why?”
He flicked ashes toward the grass, then snuffed the cigar onto the steps. The blackened ash left a dark mark, matching the void in my soul. “That whole thing tomorrow? That ain’t my version of her. That church. That casket. That choir. I don’t belong in that world. I told her a long time ago.”
“She just wanted peace,” my voice cracked, the words breaking on my tongue.
“She had peace,” he said. “In pieces. Even when the rest of y’all couldn’t see it. But she was chasing something she thought was better. Kept tryin’ to patch holes with your daddy like he wasn’t half the wound himself.”
I let that sit. It was too sharp and too true to touch.
“Doesn’t make it right not to come,” I murmured. “She was your sister.”
“I know that,” he said, his voice rough. “But I can’t sit in that sanctuary and pretend. Not when everything in me is still mad at her. Not when I remember the her that laughed until she cried. Not the one who stiffened every time that nigga walked in the room. I don’t want my last memory of her to be that.”
He reached into his pocket and pulled out MawMaw’s old locket. The one that used to hang off her rearview mirror like a lucky charm. Inside was a photo of him and Mama at her high school graduation. She was smiling wide, a simple dimple in her right cheek.
“She was the first person who made me feel I wasn’t broken,” Uncle PJ whispered. “And now…she gone. And I’m just some old man on a porch tryna remember how to breathe without the both of them in this world.”
He handed me the locket and I held it tight. Traced her face with my thumb. “I don’t want to remember her in a box. Like Mama,” he said. “I want to remember her laughing like this,” he said, tapping her picture. “Alive. Loud. Laughing like she don’t owe nobody nothin’.”
I didn’t argue. I didn’t beg him to change his mind. Because deep down, I understood. I’d been there living it. But it still stung, to hear it aloud. Another man I loved, backing away when I needed him to stay. Instead, choosing distance. Choosing self-preservation over presence.
“Even you are leaving me,” I said, my voice low.
He looked at me now, really looked. His eyes softened. “That ain’t fair, Noonie.”
Noonie. The nickname he’d given me when I was three and stayed stuck to his hip a rare summer I visited my grandmother and he was around. It called me back to the little girl I used to be before life turned me to steel.
He kissed the top of my head. “I know I ain’t perfect, Noonie. But I’m always gon’ be one call away. Funeral or not.”
I didn’t respond. Just stared at the locket in my hand. Let the ache settle instead of trying to outrun it.
The funeral smelledlike carnations and nervousness. The church was full. More people than I remembered her knowing. Old colleagues, members from different social clubs, cousins from places I hadn’t heard from in years. Everyone was in their Sunday’s best, faces tight with bereavement and caked on makeup. The choir opened with a medley as people took their seats. The organ trembled beneath the weight of it. Then came the soloist.
“I know I’ve been changed…”
There it was again. That damn line. Just that one line.
She sang it like a wail, like a promise and a warning all at once. It echoed off the walls, wormed its way into the curve of my neck.
“I know I’ve been changed…”
I didn’t want to be different. I didn’t want the life I’d carefully perfected to crumble just as it was falling into place. I wanted it to stop.
But it didn’t.
It took up residence on the folds of my brain, coming back to me over and over, at random intervals—between prayers, between eulogies, between moments where someone shoutedThank you, Lord!And I wanted to scream backWhat are you thanking him for?!I sat in the front row next to my dad, who trembled from his shoulders, his face buried in his hands. A shell of the male bravado I’d seen my whole life. Their friends filled the rest of the front pew. My friends in the pew behind me kept me grounded. Khalil rubbed my shoulders every so often. I stared straight ahead.
