Free The Funeral Dress by Susan Gregg Gilmore

daddy’s name, do you? Don’t see him coming around here helping none, do you? Uh-huh. He figured you out right quick. They all do.”
    Nolan’s eyes were red and fiery, and Emmalee grew limp as he tightened his grip around her arm. She drew the baby close. “I don’t need nothing from you!”
    Nolan grabbed her shoulder. “Cindy Faye, I’ve toldyou, woman, not to hide my bottle from me.” He hissed his wife’s name in Emmalee’s ear and slid his finger down her bare breast toward the baby’s mouth. “It ain’t right the baby got hers, and I got nothing.” Emmalee slapped at his hand and struggled to her knees.
    “I ain’t Mama. I ain’t Cynthia Faye. Wake up, you drunk fool!” Emmalee yelled, her voice choked with anger and fear. She worked to pull free from his grasp, but with the baby bound to her chest, she floundered.
    Nolan tangled his fingers around Emmalee’s long brown hair and yanked her head backward. Cursing and spitting, he dragged her toward the house. Emmalee cradled the baby in one arm. She pushed her heels into the dirt.
    “Under the cot, you damn fool. It’s under the damn cot.” Emmalee cried out and grabbed on to the doorframe with her free hand. Nolan wrenched her deeper into the house and fell onto his back, his head snapping against the wood floor. He let go of Emmalee and covered his face with the palms of his hands, the cuffs of his blue work shirt stained dark with blood.
    “Shit,” he spewed and coiled over and onto his stomach. He lay quiet for a moment and then slithered across the floor, ferreting for his bottle amid crumbs of cornbread and bits of dried orange clay.
    Emmalee crawled back outside, the baby squalling in her arms, and huddled in the dirt on the far side of the refrigerator. The mourning dove plucked another note of its melancholy song while Emmalee waited there in the cold for Nolan to calm himself with his drink.

    Later from her room, Emmalee listened to her father slurping from his bottle and rambling on about all he had seen on the side of Old Lick. She pulled the quilt over her head and hummed another bar of “The Star Spangled Banner,” but his talk sputtered on.
    “Shut up, you old fool.” She did not want him talking about Leona that way. “Just shut your mouth,” she said and rubbed her arm where he had grabbed her, certain to find a bruise there.
    The baby slept in the middle of the bed while Emmalee sat stiffly in a chair placed against the door. The chair legs were uneven, like the broken-down sofa in the front room. She rocked back and forth while she pictured Leona’s death in vivid detail as if she was watching a movie, each frame rolling too slowly across the screen.
    Leona’s eyes grew big, and her arms flailed about the truck. She reached for her husband, desperate for his hand, but she could not find it. She screamed his name as the pickup dropped to the ground. Emmalee wondered if Leona had told Curtis she loved him. She wondered if there was time or the presence of mind to say such a thing as the truck hurtled through the air and Leona’s body was flung against the truck’s roof. Emmalee wiped a tear from her eye and played the scene again, and again. When the house at last grew quiet, the baby woke, angry and loud. Her diaper was sopping wet and her belly empty.
    “Damn it, Kelly,” Emmalee said, her tone harsh. “I ain’t up for you right now.” Kelly’s cries boomed louder,and she kicked her little legs, tossing the covers from her body. “Hush up.” Emmalee stood by the bed and pulled the baby in front of her. Kelly’s face was red and her fussing, sharp. “Stop it. Everybody in Red Chert’s going to hear you if you don’t hush up.” Emmalee’s breath blew white in the room. “I’m doing the best I can, can’t you see that?”
    She slipped the wet gown over her baby’s head and stripped the wet cloth from her bottom. She held her hand on Kelly’s tummy while she reached for a dry diaper on the table next