Free Open Me by SUNSHINE O'DONNELL

clearing.
    A little groan.
    Soon the real mourners turn and, in a drowsy parade, begin to walk back down the hill, where the cars are waiting. Mem watches the high heels and loafers and cuffs and stockings move away, getting smaller and smaller as they go down the hill, attached to halting and slightly stooped bodies. The widow stays by the grave. She stares at the air, plucking at the material of her suit jacket over her chest as if her fingers might be able to break through the cloth, tear at the body, and grab at her heart, if only herhands were strong enough.
    A
heart attack
. She wants to attack her heart.
    She doesn’t cry but she has lost all composure. She is decomposing.
    One of the mourners puts a hand on the widow’s shoulder. He tilts his head to the side and says, “We’re so sorry you lost him.”
    Lost:
as if the widow’s hand had slipped away from her husband’s fingers in a crowd at the mall and she can’t find him.
Lost:
temporarily missing, like a misplaced toy. Not the right word,
lost
, which implies that her cold, chickeny husband might someday be found again, alive and well but frazzled at the
lost-and-found
.
    Mem knows that she will now be lost, on purpose, by her mother. This has been the test, and she has failed because of Derasha, who is proudly walking down the hill toward her mother’s station wagon. Mem knows she should say something, do something, feel something, but she can’t. Her feet are nightmarishly stuck in the grass. She pinches the embroidered flowers on her dry handkerchief and waits.
    Inside of her head Mem hears Aunt Ayin reciting the Lesson of Emptiness:
You cannot be empty and cry at the same time. Remember the story of Nistar, whose name means something you can’t explain. There are hundreds of 15th-century paintings of Nistar hanging in the most prestigious museums in the world. In each of the paintings, Nistar stands removed, almost not-there, gently veiled, head bent forward but shoulders still proud. She was the first Wailer to train her daughters using images that made them sad. Like Nistar, you must fill yourself up with images to use but never reveal them. And if, god forbid, you should find yourself empty on the job and at a total loss, just watch the Master Wailer nearest to you and emulate
.
    Mem finally turns to look at her mother, who is staring at the widow, and Mem feels what must be her own heart breaking. She wonders if this is the beginning of dying. She learned that the body dies slowly and unsystematically, like an old car, starting with the brain while the liver continues to pump bile, intestines still directing gasses from the meal before the last meal. Death, her mother has explained, is not so much a process as it is the sporadic shutting down of processes. Death does not happen, it is not ahappening, it is the draining of a happening, as cold is simply the absence of heat. It is a dropped plate, a switch turned off, a wire cut. The sound of things ceasing, not of things absent.
    It is impossible to be empty and cry at the same time. Just watch the Master Wailer nearest to you and emulate. Look at your mother
.
    Mem looks at her mother. Even with her swollen eyes and nose she is so beautiful she is like a bright light that hurts to look at. Mem looks at her anyway. She looks at her standing to the side of the grave canopy, in front of the other mothers who seem too pale, too dim, their features too small. Mem’s mother glows, super-bright against the stiff blacks. The other mothers defer to her, heads bent just a little as they wait to listen to her deep voice.
    Look at her again
.
    These other mothers know that Mem’s mother is the Master. That she is special, chosen, a legend, a star. That her blacks are the best blacks and her wails are the best wails and her handkerchiefs are hand-embroidered with forget-me-not patterns handed down for hundreds of generations from ancient Rome. They know this and so does Mem. Mem looks at her mother and her