Free Getting Mother's Body by Suzan Lori Parks Page B

“dreamt I made a phone call. A whole slew of numbers. Longer than just long distance. Phone rings and rings. Then the party picks up. On the other end guess who it was? It was
me
. I’d called my own self up. I knew it was me cause I could recognize my voice. But I couldn’t understand what the f— I was saying, scuze my French, ha ha, it was like I was speaking in another language.”
    â€œHuh,” I say.
    â€œGot any idea what it all means?”
    â€œNope.”
    Sometimes I dream of Mother and me driving. She’s got on her jewels and a fur coat. She asks me to read out the signs and I can’t read none of them, or she’s wearing a long evening dress, gets out the car and walks into a river. When she was living her voice was low and deep, like riding on a gravel road, but in my dreams when she talks her voice is high-pitch. I wonder if, when they pave the supermarket over, I’ll still dream of her.
    â€œI bet you got interesting dreams,” Myrna says.
    â€œI don’t never dream of nothing,” I says.
    â€œMostly I dream of my kids,” Myrna says.
    I eat my orange. When Laz heard I was pregnant, he got excited, like it was his even though he knew about Snipes and me. He showed me in one of his Encyclopaedias. A baby, just starting out, looks like the section of an orange.
I’m eating this orange but don’t you grow none,
I says to the baby.
    The bus rolls on fast. Myrna’s got a slip of paper close to her chest, hiding the words from me.
    â€œMe and Dale, we look across our kids at each other,” she says. “We used to look at each other and there weren’t nothing in between. Now we look at each other across our kids. Five kids. And each time we had one it was like this piece of Dale got born that I didn’t even know was there.” She sags back in her chair, handing me the piece of paper she’s got.
    â€œDoctor Parker, in Gomez,” I says, reading.
    â€œHe’s at where the bus stops. Where I got on, that’s where his clinic’s at,” she says.
    â€œHe a friend of yours?”
    â€œHe can help you if yr in trouble,” Myrna says. Her voice on the rope dragging in the dirt behind her. She tells me about how Doctor Parker is nice, how you have to spend the night, how it don’t hurt, and other things.
    â€œMy husband and me ain’t in trouble,” I says. But she upends her last beer, not listening.
    She sits straight ahead in her seat, putting both hands on her armrest and cocking herself slowly back, three times, until she’s laying there almost horizontal. Her flattish belly, where her baby was once but ain’t no longer cause she got the last laugh, stretches out long when she stretches out. The boy sitting behind her starts crying again.
    We get to Royalty with its big gold shimmery sign right outside my window. Myrna gathers up her things quick.
    â€œStay sweet, Billy Beede,” she says.
    â€œYou too,” I says.
    She walks down the aisle, fluffing herself like a Miss America would, walking down a runway. She gets off the bus and, after looking around, heads toward a taxicab.
    Across from the depot there’s a little piece of train trestle, rusted metal coming from nowheres and going to nowheres. The bus takes off again and the trestle disappears behind a car dealership. Mother tolt me once how when a person jumps off a bridge, on their way down, before they hit the dirt or the water or whatever, they got plenty of time to reconsider. I remember her telling me that. And I remember not believing her. Folks fall too fast.
    WILLA MAE BEEDE
    This song’s called “Willa Mae’s Blues.”
    My man, he loves me
    He bought me a diamond ring.
    My man, he loves me
    He bought me a diamond ring.
    Well, his wife, she found out, she says my pretty ring don’t mean a thing.

    My man, he loves me
    He bought me a Cadillac car.
    My man, he loves me
    He bought me a