My Old Kentucky Home
Della made the mistake of glancing down at the email that pinged onto her laptop screen at the exact moment the guy sitting next to her in lecture leaned over and asked if she wanted to go out this weekend. The email was from her parents, who were halfway around the world on a cruise ship filled with enough shrimp cocktail to entertain a gaggle of empty nesters.
Della’s Great Aunt Pearl had died. The funeral was in just three days and they would not make it back, so could Della make the six-hour drive from Chicago to Louisville to pick up her grandmother? Someone needed to drive Grandma Faye to southern Kentucky for her sister’s funeral since she couldn’t be trusted with a machine for more than an hour at a time. Della suppressed an audible groan and instead settled on a whispered, exasperated, “Lord.”
She loved her grandmother. That was not the predicament. No one, however, had been enamored with Great Aunt Pearl, except perhaps her husband Jeb, who passed only a few months ago himself. Although in southern Kentucky, where barrels of hay outnumbered bodies, people often settled with whomever they could find.
Bam, there was that un-nameable feeling that appeared when she thought about things like the sprawling yet still isolated suburbs unique to rural areas, or the drawl she slipped into on the phone with relatives, or her high school parking lot or really just parking lots in general, which were nearly always a sign of expansion but never growth.
“That’s a no, then?” the guy next to her whispered back.
Della glanced at him. He was not just any boy, unfortunately. Li had black hair and brown eyes, and his sockets were set so far back and beneath his matching dark brows that he had the appearance of staring through layers of atmosphere you didn’t know you were breathing.
She did want to go out with him. She really wanted. They were both seniors and had ended up next to each other in the fourth row of their Shakespeare class every day since the start of the semester. She wasn’t sure if this unabashed, direct approach of his was a theater-major-thing, but it was certainly a refreshing one on a college campus where guys were just as coy and vague as the flighty older southern women she knew.
The words were out of her mouth before she realized how bad they would sound. “My great aunt died. I have to drive to Kentucky tomorrow.”
Li smiled. “You can just tell me no. I’ll listen.”
“I’m serious. I’ll have to miss classes Friday and rent a car. My grandma needs me to drive her to the funeral.”
“In Louisville?”
Lord. He remembered. Another pang of disappointment struck her. He was accumulating points faster than she could appreciate them. “A couple hours south of it. Almost to Tennessee. Maybe we could do something when I get back?” If he were still interested, that is.
He turned away from her. After a pause that was long enough for Della to decide that was that, there would be no Li for her, he turned back. “Need company?”
“What?”
He shrugged. “I like road trips.”
“It’s a funeral.”
“I’ll help drive.”
A sudden image stuck in her head: Li, with his pale skin and black hair, in the cab of a pickup truck, squished between guys with names like Bud and Cody and shotguns as long as their chests were across. She had the sudden urge to run out of the lecture hall to the nearest bathroom so she could scream and pee a little.
“You’re serious,” she said.
“Pick me up on Friday,” he replied. “I’ll hang my suit in the shower to steam out the wrinkles.”
***
Grandma Faye loved her family very much. There was nothing and no one above kin.
However, after the many years she had spent on this earth, sometimes kin grew tiresome. No one gets to choose their siblings, and Faye and her sister Pearl made some good years and ruined other years. Pearl had been the troublemaker in their family, Faye the baby of all the children and thus the angel. Another sister had been the studious one, a younger brother had been cunning, an older brother had been the true father figure. With Pearl gone, Faye was the last one left. Perhaps now she would have to inhabit all of these roles.
As Faye watched her granddaughter pull into her condo’s driveway Friday afternoon, she was more happy to see Dellanne than she was sad about Pearl. That’s what happened with time. She had not become less sentimental. At her age, it was hard to be surprised, and when it was hard to be surprised, it was difficult to be sad. In truth, she made a bet with her hidden stash of cash that Pearl would’ve gone foul a long time ago, what with her sister’s smoking habit. No, she was not very sad. And she owed her cookie jar fifty dollars.
“Dellanne!” she cried, meeting her granddaughter in the drive. No sooner had she wrapped her arms around her girl than a boy stepped out of the passenger side of the car. Oh Lord. He was a handsome one. With dimples, at that.
“Grandma, this is Li, a friend of mine. He wanted to come along.”
Faye, like most elderly southerners, did not trust outsiders encroaching on family business. But she did appreciate a handsome face, especially one that reminded her of her husband when he had been alive and young. A little bit of Cary Grant if Cary Grant had been more like Elvis. She offered the two kids food since they were both thin and probably studied too much when they should have been eating. When they were ready to take off, Li moved his backpack from the front to the back seat without being asked so Faye could sit up front, and it was then that Faye knew she would not mind the drive with the young man.
Kin was a strange thing. As a young girl, she had grown up in the deep south of Kentucky where blood ran stronger—and more poisonous, sometimes—than moonshine. Yet, in a single instant, someone could be absorbed into the bubble that surrounded families for generations, and from that moment they were just as responsible for all of your secrets as you were for theirs.
***
Great Aunt Pearl’s farmhouse was a handful of miles off a dirt road that was itself a handful of miles off a main road that ran through a thimble of a town just north of the border between Kentucky and Tennessee.
It was still light, and Grandma Faye insisted they go up to the house first. Now that Pearl had passed, no one was living there, and Faye wanted to make sure a relative had done their part and closed up the place while folks waited for the funeral. The house sat on two hundred acres of good farmland that belonged to Faye and Pearl’s side of the family, not Jeb’s. Faye also wanted to drive around the property to make sure all looked well and good. By right, it was all hers now.
The farmhouse blazed with light when Della steered the car off the dirt road and onto the gravel drive. There were no fewer than five pickup trucks parked next to the house. The entire drive from Louisville, Li’s eyes stuck to the rolling bluegrass and the small towns that were shy behind their churches. He answered questions from Grandma Faye, every so often giving a quick tug to a wayward strand of Della’s hair when the old woman wasn’t looking. Della met his eyes many times in the rearview mirror. But out of everything Della caught him staring at, she could tell this cavalry of Chevys, Fords, and Dodges was something he had never seen before in San Francisco where his parents lived, or in Hong Kong where his grandparents were.
“What. In. The. World.” Grandma Faye said, eyeing the active house. “Lord, can’t trust no one to do things properly down here. I don’t even recognize these cars. Here, park right here. They’ve gone and done blocked the whole drive.”
As her grandma made like a demon for the front door, Della scrambled out of the car to catch up. The presence of strangers could certainly light a fire under the older woman’s ass.
Li jumped out, his eyes alight as he circled the trucks, automobiles ever the common language between men and cultures. “What does everyone carry around in these anyway? Do you all really need to haul stuff all the time? This thing’s massive!” he said, kicking the tire of the nearest truck in admiration.
Good question, Della thought. Then she noticed the odd, irregular outline of shapes in the trucks’ beds. That was…that was a lamp. That was a rocking chair in another. One truck’s bed was filled with entire racks of what appeared to be moth-eaten flannels. And Della was pretty sure if she lifted up the tarp in the bed closest to her, she would find Pearl’s perpetually out of tune Wurlitzer stand piano. The trucks were full of junk. Pearl and Jeb’s stuff.
That feeling flushed through her again, and she could begin to pinpoint what it was, at least on the surface: A fear of something, of an outcome yet to blow through. It made her stomach queasy in the way it sometimes felt in the morning when she hadn’t eaten anything yet and so the acid in her gut was strong and hungry. It wasn’t really fear of things like pickup trucks and old lamps and funerals for people no one liked—but it was close.
The door must have been unlocked, because Faye was already in the house by the time Della and Li scrambled up to the front porch.
It was not quite a party, but because an open container of Moon Pies was sitting on a coffee table—one of the few pieces of furniture left—it might as well have been in Faye’s eyes. Everyone in the den and kitchen was too busy to notice the trio at first. What Della assumed were distant cousins were hauling away furniture, removing decorations and pictures from walls to reveal the less-faded wallpaper beneath, and packing trash bags of linens into boxes stamped with a logo that said Brookside Baptist Church.
“Don’t sit anywhere,” Della said to Li when he moved toward a couch. “They kept their loaded guns underneath the cushions.” He moved a little closer to her instead.
Faye darted from room to room, suddenly ten years more nimble as she weaved around folks. She was searching. Or hunting, Della wasn’t sure. Li was munching on a Moon Pie when she looked behind her to make sure he had not been swallowed up in the disarray.
“Ms. Faye!” a voice screeched from the kitchen. Della and her grandmother whirled to face an older woman with a bob of dyed cotton candy pink hair the box had likely promised was supposed to be a soft rose. “Well look at you, I haven’t seen you in ages!”
Faye gave the woman a tight-lipped smile that Della knew was reserved for people she did not like or did not know, which were usually the same thing.
“Don’t you remember me? Sissy from Hill Ridge High. We were in the same class.”
Recognition spilled onto Faye’s face only to fall away as a frown shoved in. It appeared Faye did, in fact, remember Sissy.
“What’s going on, Sissy?” Faye asked, looking around pointedly at the flutter of activity in a house that should have remained respectfully empty until after the funeral.
Sissy cocked her pink head. “What do you mean? We’re just clearing out a few things before the funeral. It’s what Pearl had asked for when she knew she was getting sicker. I volunteered to help take care of these things for her after she passed.”
“What kind of things?” Faye pressed. It was hard to tell if Sissy’s evasion was anything more than just spaciness as a byproduct of a mind cluttered with years of tobacco smoke.
“Things like clothes and blankets.” She nodded to a group of cousins hauling a box through the front door. “She asked me to donate them to the church. With a number of other things. Pearl was such a good soul. Never wanted anything to go to waste.”
Faye narrowed her eyes as Della’s mouth unhinged slightly. “My sister,” Faye began very slowly, “asked you to donate something to the church. For nothing in return.”
Sissy’s head bobbed. “Well, yes! We run a drive every month. Collecting clothes and furniture and kitchen supplies and such. She wanted to donate most everything here. My husband is the preacher, and I can tell you the church will so appreciate this.”
Faye and Della were speechless. Sissy’s smile grew each second Faye said nothing. Della looked back to see Li, sans Moon Pie, but now holding a box someone had dropped into his arms while folks loaded Pearl’s collection of kitschy salt and pepper shakers into it. She gave him a look and he gave her a sheepish shrug in return that was both a defense and a cry for help.
Faye found her voice by the time Li managed to abandon the box and join them. “So how much exactly is she giving away here, Sissy?” she asked.
Sissy’s expression slipped. “I think you best just come to the reading of the will tomorrow. It’s all laid out there. Pearl was very generous.”
“Generous? I don’t remember this in her will.”
“She updated it before she passed,” Sissy explained, like this was the most normal thing in the world. “And so did Jeb, before he was called away. Pearl and I have always been close as schoolgirls. I helped them make all the arrangements in the end.”
Faye nodded. “I’m sure you did.”
Sissy took the awkward pause that followed to finally glance at Della. “Dellanne, I hardly recognized you. Look at you, all grown up, a real woman. Where in the world did you get that blonde hair from?” She nodded to Faye, whose hair was almost as dark as Li’s, even before she had to start dyeing it. She faced Li. “I’m Sissy. You look more like Faye’s grandbaby than anyone here.” She extended her hand.
Li gave Sissy’s outstretched hand such an intense look as was his nature that it became obvious to everyone that he was seriously debating about whether to take it. After a pause, he stuffed his hands into his armpits.
Faye puffed out her chest as Sissy withered a fraction. “We’ll be there tomorrow. This all too fast. I’m Pearl’s kin, after all.”
“Yes, well,” Sissy tittered, a shrill laugh caught in her throat. “We’re trying to honor their wishes. We can’t change the wills now, can we?” she asked in a way that suggested there had most certainly been an opportune time to change them.
Faye turned to leave, wiggling her hand into the nook of Li’s elbow on her left and into Della’s on her right. Her eye landed on something in the corner and the trio stopped abruptly like some confused circus act on their way to the stage.
“Sissy,” Faye called over her shoulder. “Where is that going?”
Sissy followed her gaze. In the corner sat a large print of the traditional 1958 My Old Kentucky Home painting by Haddon Sundblom. The print was nearly the size of the fridge and had to be fifty years old by itself; its brass frame was now more tarnish than brass.
“That?” Sissy asked. “It’ll be moved and stored at my house until we figure out where it’s supposed to go. The reading tomorrow will shed some light on some of the miscellaneous items. It’s an awfully gorgeous picture, though.”
“Pearl told me she was giving that to me. It was our mother’s.”
“I suppose we’ll find out tomorrow, won’t we?”
Faye pointed at the painting and looked Sissy squarely in the face. “That belongs to me.”
They left before they saw the beginnings of Sissy’s defiant and slightly fearful expression. When they were on the porch and in the quiet once more, Grandma Faye’s shoulders sagged a centimeter as she said, in a softer voice this time, “That belongs to me.”
***
Faye stared holes into her hot brown. It was a pitiful thing, the ham tough and the gravy watery and devoid of salt. She could have made one miles better. But she chided herself. Who was she to judge the diner’s food when she didn’t live around here any longer and thus had no claim to opinions on the town’s makings and doings? That’s what happened when you left a place. For a while, you could return and still call yourself a stitch in the community quilt. For a while, you could come back and still be party to the gossip, you could still contribute a marshmallow salad recipe to the church’s cookbook.
But Faye had left this little town for Louisville such a long time ago that her sister would have told her she didn’t even have the right to say its name.
Maybe Pearl was right. But Faye was at least owed that goddamned painting.
Boop’s Diner was the only late-night eatery in town, which meant nine o’clock and not a minute later. They had come from the reading of the will, which took place at—where else, damn Sissy and her claws—Brookside Baptist Church down the road from the farmhouse. Dellanne and Li sat across from her in the booth, both of them watching her with tentative expressions as if she were about to call down a lightning storm. The reading, of course, had been a disaster. Forget the lamps and the rugs and the bed skirts and the jewelry and the guns and the television and the china cabinets and the tractors.
They were taking the house and the farm.
A week before his death, Jeb had changed his will to ensure Pearl inherited everything he owned. The two of them never had any children, but his cousins and distant relatives had been cut out. Sissy had shown up on Pearl’s doorstep only a few weeks before Jeb passed first. Pearl, seeing only a simple woman offering to drive her to doctors’ appointments and run errands, gave in easily, no longer the spitfire Faye knew as her older sister. Faye couldn’t have cared less about this, except for the fact that Pearl did the exact same thing. A week before Pearl’s death, her newfound friend Sissy helped her redo her will. Everything she owned—including the farmhouse and the land it sat on—she was giving to the church.
But what set Faye’s blood to boiling more than anything was Sissy had convinced both Jeb and Pearl to be baptized before they passed. Baptized! Her sister, dressed in white with her head sunk beneath the water of the creek that ran behind the farm? She wanted to spit. Her sister was more likely to drown the preacher himself than take an interest in God. She snorted.
Della and Li looked up at the sound, their burgers half demolished in front of them. The kids kept staring at her, but Faye didn’t mind because she was watching them just as much. It provided her a little bit of escape in this mess. She had not been around a young man since her daughter dated Della’s father. And before that, she married her own husband when she was barely eighteen and thus never spent much time courting anyone else. It was some kind of comfort to see boys still moved the same pieces across the same board. Li had a habit of leaning toward Della. It was clear the boy just wanted to be in Della’s space, to be noticed and accounted for. Well, she couldn’t blame him for that. Didn’t they all want the same thing?
Faye’s mind wandered. How was it, having stayed behind and never left the state, Faye led quite a happy life—but that, at the same time, Della flew away as soon as she could and still had found someone? Weren’t she and her grandbaby of the same blood, made of the same stuff? How could a single generation between them lead to such different people?
“Grandma? You done? We should head out.”
Faye came back to herself. Her granddaughter looked worried, but then again, the girl always looked a little worried these days, and it doubled like rising biscuit dough when she came back home. It would be hard to live in two places, to have one foot planted in a city and one planted in the absence of one. Poor child.
Della’s eyes found something behind Faye’s head, and Faye turned to see what had caused the urgent need to leave. Sissy had pulled into the diner’s parking lot. In Jeb’s old truck. A young blonde boy with a few other fellows jumped out with her and picked a booth on the other side of the diner. After they finished reading Pearl’s will, Faye had stormed out to get the kids some supper instead of confronting Sissy head on. But she had flipped the old pink woman the bird and did not care if Sissy or God had seen it.
Faye nodded to Della. But before they could leave, the blonde boy and his sunburned friends strolled over and planted themselves at the edge of each side of the booth.
“I’m Casey,” said the blonde boy, who looked about Della’s age but did not have the expression of worry that most intelligent people had. “Sissy’s grandson, Ms. Faye. Pleased to meet all of y’all.” He did not offer his hand. “Dellanne,” he said, nodding and using her name as if he knew her, and Faye was pretty sure he did not. The people down here liked to use names before they had been given, as if to say they could own something without asking.
With Della by the window, Li was at eye level with the pistol strapped to Casey’s hip. He nodded at the boys. “I’m Li. We were actually just leaving.”
A boy in the back hollered “Rush Hour!” causing Casey and the others to crack up.
“That was Jackie Li, right?” Casey added. “Or Jet Chan?”
Li’s stare went blank, head swiveling slowly to face Della, like he was in disbelief rather than offended. Della knew, if there were a moment in time when Li would give up, cards folded, and throw himself into the nearest coal-polluted backwater creek to avoid her—this would be that moment. But he stayed and simply stole one of her remaining fries, so Della followed his lead and kept quiet even though her fingers itched to make chicken scratch out of Casey’s face.
“A shame about today,” Casey continued. “Pearl shouldn’t have done you like that, Ms. Faye, but I suppose someone’s connection to God and their church is stronger than kin sometimes. Nana Sissy wanted me to make sure you knew you’re always welcome at our house. We got plenty of space. And the church’ll do something good with Pearl’s house. Don’t worry.”
“Where’s My Old Kentucky Home? Ask your Nana about that,” Faye said.
Casey’s sunburned forehead crinkled as his eyebrows rose. “She didn’t tell you? The church’ll be auctioning off some stuff from the house. Pearl’s—”
“Pearl’s wishes, yes, we know,” Faye finished.
“We’ll be helping a lot of people in town with the money we raise, Ms. Faye.”
“Enjoy the truck,” Faye said sweetly.
Casey didn’t acknowledge the bite to Faye’s words and just smiled. As his friends sauntered back across the diner to join Sissy and her husband the preacher, he tipped an imaginary hat at Li. “Later, Jet Chan.”
That was it. Della snatched the nearest fork in her fist, not yet quite sure what kind of damage she intended to inflict with said fork, but Li beat her to it. He rose like he was going to be a gentleman and offer his hand to Casey to say goodbye, but before Della could blink, Li grabbed the ketchup bottle and squirted a large Li right onto the front of Casey’s John Deere T-shirt. Even the dot made it in there.
“It’s Jet Li,” Li corrected him.
Everyone was silent, looks of mild horror popping onto faces across the diner. Then Casey woke up. He landed one swift punch across Li’s nose, but only one. A couple local cops were sitting a few booths over and quickly yanked Casey back so Faye and Della could pull a bleeding Li from the diner.
The cops’ grumbling followed them from the diner, they’d let this one go just this once since everyone was grieving in their own way, even though them two boys couldn’t’ve known Great Aunt Pearl that well really, bless her heart, and…
As Faye left the diner, Sissy waived goodbye from the safety of her booth.
***
Della woke herself up at midnight. Restlessness helped pull her awake, a decision that needed finishing, one she had started to make when she saw Sissy pull up in Jeb’s truck. Or maybe it wasn’t a decision but rather that odd feeling again, one that seemed like something close to fear but that did not kindly offer up what it was she needed to be afraid of.
She crawled out of bed, moving like a slug to avoid waking Grandma Faye next to her. The motel they were in was just on the edge of town as all motels were. No way would Faye have taken any of the neighbors’ offers to house them for the weekend; they were all in bed with Sissy, as far as her grandmother was concerned.
Her feet bare on the crusty carpet, Della padded over to the other double bed where Li was sleeping. His nose had not been broken, but dried blood still stuck in his cupid’s bow. She gave his shoulder a shake. His eyes popped right open, almost too fast.
“Where you waiting for me to sneak over here in the middle of the night?” she asked in a hushed whisper.
A pause. “Yes.”
“Even after the diner? I’m sorry about Casey. About all of it. Down here—”
He waved a hand. “I just wish I could’ve seen you use that fork.” A wink.
She would tuck that away for later. “Get dressed,” she said, grabbing the rental car keys off the top of the mini fridge.
“Where are we going?” he asked, but he was already slipping his jeans over his boxers, like he had been planning for this scenario just as much as the former one.
***
They parked the rental car at the bottom of the drive to Sissy’s house, which, because it was also the preacher’s house, was built next door to Brookside Baptist Church. Della and Li sat in the quiet car for several minutes just staring up at the church and the house, which were both dark and seemingly empty. But Della knew Sissy was in there, asleep and content.
Li’s voice was a shot in the stillness. “What’s so special about this painting anyway? Isn’t it a print that could just be replicated?”
Della didn’t know. But it had been Faye’s mother’s, which meant it had become one of those heirlooms that absorbed value on the basis of how long it had taken up space in a living room. She said, “They won’t have locked any doors. No one does around here. We’ll grab it, go to the funeral tomorrow, and then be back to Louisville before Sissy realizes it’s gone.”
“And why can’t we just slip out and steal it during the service?”
“Sissy would know what we were doing the moment we left the room.”
Li nodded, agreeing. “What if they’re awake?”
“It’s not in the house. Casey said it’s in the auction so it’s stashed in the church.” She was not completely positive about this, but Li didn’t need to know that.
“So we’re going to break in and steal something from a church?” he repeated. He let out a low whistle. She remembered then that he had been raised Catholic. “I must like you,” he teased.
She strained to study his features in the dark car. “I just want to be clear here,” she began. “I’m not going to have sex with you just because you came all the way down here for the funeral, not even if you help me steal this thing.”
He grinned, a joke in his smile. “Well shit, that was my whole plan.”
An absurd giggle escaped her at the sarcasm in his voice. Her eyes flew back to Sissy’s house and then to the trucks in the driveway. A second giggle died in her throat when her gaze landed on Jeb’s truck. Furry burned in her cheeks. “Uncle Jeb—Pearl’s husband—taught me to shoot, you know,” she said, not to anyone in particular.
The fear appeared then, stronger this time, like the bite of vinegar in her grandmother’s coleslaw. And then she realized what the fear was for, why she always felt like a bad cold, or a bout of food poisoning, was coming on when she thought of going home. She liked this world just enough to stay. And whether home home was way down here, or if it meant Louisville, it really didn’t matter. All it took was one good trip, and then another, and then you were coming back all the time after you worked so hard to leave and it was doable because it was comfortable and the comfort is what scared her the most. Before you knew it, you had taken five steps forward just to take five back again and it was up to the next generation to make the progress in the end. You had wasted your chance.
“Why do they stay?” she said into the darkness.
Li tilted his head at her. “Why do we leave?” She hadn’t expected an answer and at her confused expression, he went on. “Why do people like us leave? We’re the only children, the last of the line, so to speak. Oldest children leave without any guilt because they know their parents will still have their siblings for a while. And youngest children leave because they’ve watched their siblings do it all before and their parents are used to it. So why do we leave?”
She didn’t have an answer. Honestly, she had forgotten he was an only child, too; maybe that was why he had been so excited to come with her for company and why she had been so eager to accept. Who sits shotgun with you when everyone in your family is either miles ahead up the road already or miles behind you on the trip.
Without speaking, they were out of the car and shuffling toward the church, their hoods thrown over their heads. The doors were unlocked and the painting was there like she prayed it would be. They found it leaning against a rocking chair in the nursery tucked at the back of the sanctuary, with other items for the auction strewn around amidst stuffed animals and forgotten pacifiers. With Li on one side and Della on the other, they hauled the painting into the crooks of their waists and then hauled ass out of the church.
But Della had not accounted for the dogs.
Apparently Sissy had three massive bloodhounds living in their backyard, dogs that had all come awake upon hearing Della and Li. Their howls broke the silence and lights flickered on immediately in the house.
Della and Li ran, bolting for the car, the painting jostling between them. She thought for sure the glass over the print would break at any moment and then they would be leaving a sparkling trail of broken guilt for Sissy to find. More lights came on, but faded quickly in the darkness around the house so that they stumbled across the shadowy and pocketed earth in front of them. She cringed as their shoes crunched the gravel, the sound filling her ears like gun shots until, from the house, came actual gun shots.
The stout sound of a healthy shotgun cut through the air and a shell whistled past them.
“Fuck,” Li cursed under his breath.
They were steps from the rental car. Another shot broke the silence. Shrill voices echoed from the house now, probably Sissy calling 911. Li cursed again except this time in Cantonese.
They reached the car just as Della thought her chest would split. She started the engine as Li hefted the painting into the trunk and then he was beside her in the passenger seat, his hands braced on the dash. Another shot echoed behind them. Someone had spotted the car. She only hoped that the house was far enough away and the rental car an ambiguous enough shape and color that Sissy wouldn’t be able to put two and two together.
Leaving the headlights off, they peeled away into the night.
***
Faye sat quietly as the funeral began, not uttering a single word of discontent. This was her sister’s funeral, the only one she would get, so she needed to at least act respectable in front everyone. Being the only child left of the original siblings, she did not recognize many of the faces in the pews of Brookside Baptist Church that Sunday morning.
Faye sat quietly when the preacher, Sissy’s husband, urged the guests to join him in singing hymns. They were hymns Pearl would have hated if she had ever listened to hymns. Sitting between Dellanne and Li, Faye simply hummed along with the words and latched onto her granddaughter’s hand.
Faye sat quietly when Pearl’s friends stood up and talked about what a fixture Pearl had been in the community. She only pursed her lips. The preacher asked if she wanted to say a few words as well, but she declined. There was nothing she needed to say in front of these people, and a small part of her was only just beginning to realize she was angry at Pearl for signing it all away. To people like Sissy, for that matter.
But when the time came for the preacher to speak about Pearl and the Christian life she had led under the protective eyes of God, Faye could no longer sit quietly.
“Our Pearl was the epitome of grace in this community,” the preacher began. “Pearl had one of the kindest hearts I have ever known in a person. She showed compassion when others were aloof, empathy when others were envious, and goodness when others were angry. She lived and walked with Christ and we are a better people because of her. She and her husband were some of the most generous people—”
That was it. Faye stood and ambled up the aisle. It took a moment for everyone to notice her, and only when she reached the front of the sanctuary did the preacher shut his trap.
“Now hold on a minute,” she said, staring out at the pews. “Y’all have no idea what you’re talking about. My sister Pearl was no saint. She certainly wasn’t a Christian. She did not volunteer, she did not willingly show up with donations in her arms. The only time she went to a food drive was to get free canned okra. None of you have any idea who she was and it’s shameful. And she would have told every one of you that if she was here with us right now.”
She took a steadying breath. The church had gone silent, and in the calm, she remembered why they were all here. Pearl was dead. She found Della’s face in the crowd and held on. “She would have told you that if she was here,” she repeated, softer this time.
Quickly—not because she was cold-hearted, but because she didn’t like all those eyes on her—she kissed her thumb and touched it to Pearl’s closed casket. Then she made for the front pew where Sissy sat and stood right in front of the darn woman with her pink hair.
Pointing one wrinkled finger at her, she said, “You, Sissy, Are. A. Bitch.”
Faye was out the church before she could hear the gasps, Della and Li on her heels. Their stuff was already packed in the car. She folded herself into the passenger seat as Della got behind the wheel. No one said a word as the church appeared in the rearview mirror.
***
It did not take Faye long to convince Li to stay for supper before the drive back to Chicago, and Della was soon to follow. The relieved smile that stole across her grandmother’s face when they agreed made Della’s heart hurt. Of course they could stay.
The ritual was familiar to Della. Only a few minutes in her grandmother’s yellow-tiled kitchen, the ingredients for cornbread spread out on Formica countertops, and the muscle memory kicked in. Oil the skillet, mix the batter…Grandma Faye worked next to her, frying up chicken on the stovetop and then eventually kale and bacon in whatever the chicken left behind. Li was nearly crying in anticipation at the smell of butter and fried meat.
When supper was ready, Li helped Della carry the food to the long dining room table that was clearly meant for more than three people and that rested ambitiously in front of the fireplace. Faye arrived last, a basket of biscuits steaming under a dishtowel in her hands, and came to an abrupt stop when she rounded the corner into the dining room.
Della held her breath. Li gripped the back of a dining chair.
Propped up on the mantel of the fireplace was the stolen—repossessed—My Old Kentucky Home print.
They had not told Faye about it after sneaking back to the motel. If Sissy had asked Faye about it during the funeral, Della wanted her grandmother to be saved from lying in a church.
Faye just looked at the painting a long moment, absently setting the biscuits on the table. She did not ask how they got it back, or even if Sissy knew. She just stared, until finally she sank into a chair and began to cry.
Della hadn’t ever seen her cry before. Not at any of the other siblings’ funerals, and not over Pearl until that moment. Maybe it was because Pearl was the second-to-last sibling left. Faye was now next, if there were a line for these sorts of things. She thought about rubbing her grandmother’s back, but she felt that was wholly inadequate. Truthfully, she didn’t know how to comfort someone who had just arrived into a role she herself had been playing for two decades.
Li was clearly also itching to provide some comfort. He said, “I can hang it for you before we go if you’ve got a hammer.”
Della didn’t know why or how, but this did the trick. Grandma Faye wiped her cheeks and perked up, motioning for them to sit. “C’mon now, kids, let’s eat. Food’s getting cold. Thank you for my picture. I’ll say grace.”
They did as they were told and clasped hands. Li pinched Della’s pinky as Faye prayed. For the rest of supper, My Old Kentucky Home looked down at them over the biscuits and ambrosia salad.